FIELD SIZE LIMITS: HOW ARE THEY DETERMINED?
DAVE MCGILLIVRAY
Real estate. This is one of the single biggest challenges many races face given the current incredible and amazing growth of our industry. Where do you put all these people? Demand is far exceeding available space for many races – look at the BAA Boston Marathon, the TD Beach to Beacon, the Mt. Washington Road Race, and the New Balance Falmouth Road Race, to give just a few examples.
All of these races turn away hundreds of runners while leaving lots of entry fee income on the table. I’m sure race directors who would die to get this kind of business are saying, “Well, that’s a good problem to have!” True, but that’s an oxymoron and is still is a problem just the same.
Because of this overwhelming demand, many races have had to reluctantly place self-imposed field size limits on their races. If the races don’t do it themselves, then many times the local authorities will. In many cities and towns, limits are imposed to protect the best interest of the city and to eliminate or minimize congestion and impact the race will have on the local community, as well as the amount of time this impact will have.
Interestingly, it actually seems like we have created a catch-22 situation. When we impose participation limits to control the size of the field, we actually end up creating more demand and a greater sense of urgency for runners to register right away. Thus, some races are continuing to sell out at record pace. If we could accommodate everyone there wouldn’t be this sense of urgency to register. Many runners who get shut out suggest the race just accept a few more. But that’s like telling the second-place runner across the finish line that if they ran just a little faster they would have won. The bottom line is… you just can’t.
However, races with limited fields become charity fund-raising powerhouses by setting aside a certain number of spots in an otherwise maxed-out event for runners raising funds for charity. Charity slots in field-limited events like the TCS New York City Marathon and BAA Boston Marathon can fetch $5,000 or more simply to get a spot on the starting line (and entrants still pay the standard entry fees after raising the charity funds). Charity entries at the lottery-limited Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Mile require a minimum of $500 raised for charity. Charity entrants raised $38.7 million at the 2019 BAA Boston Marathon and $22.8 million at the 2018 Bank of America Chicago Marathon
So, how are field size limits determined anyway? The two biggest culprits are real estate (limited space) and time (how much time are we given to conduct the event safely and properly).
Among many factors here are just a few that need to be taken into consideration:
Available space at the start. For Boston, everyone knows the race starts in the small town of Hopkinton. We actually have barely more space to work with today in trying to accommodate 30,000 runners than they had 100 years ago with only a few hundred runners. Our start line is only 39 feet wide. Therefore, we need to be creative and innovative in how we manage and handle all the participants (e.g., setting up an Athletes’ Village and utilizing wave starts).
Available space at the finish. As with the start, it’s critical to have enough space to accommodate all the runners and all the needed services at the finish. In many cases, the start and the finish are common, so even more space is needed. In addition to having enough space for all the runners, the finish also contains the majority of infrastructure of the race – tents, bleachers, staging, etc. All this takes up an enormous amount of space. The more congested it becomes, the worse the experience and the riskier in terms of things going wrong.
Road closure time. The amount of time public safety will allow the roads to be closed is a major factor in how many people you can put on the road. The shorter the amount of time, the fewer participants you should accept.
Course capacity. The width of your roads—accounting for the isolated “pinch points” along the course—also plays a key role in determining how many runners to accept and how you should start your race.
Parking spaces. For some races, this can be the overriding factor in how many participants you can accept. For the Mt. Washington Road Race in New Hampshire, this is indeed the case—the number of cars you can park at the top of the mountain has everything to do with how many runners can be accepted in the race. Of course, in some cases, you can identify ancillary parking spaces within a few miles of the race venue, but then you have to institute an elaborate transportation program to an already complex event.
Manpower and available resources. Even if you have all the space in the world, you need a proportionate amount of manpower and resources to handle the field size, from volunteers to equipment to supplies to medical coverage, and on and on it goes. You don’t ever want to accept more than you can comfortably handle.
Most races go by the rule of “quality vs. quantity.” More is not always better and in many cases more is, in fact, less in terms of providing a positive experience. Even though Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street exclaimed: “greed is good.” Greed is not so good when putting on a race and letting in more than the event can handle… you don’t want to blow a fuse. No one seems to win when you turn away runners, but in the end, you also come to the realization that is one of the very reasons the race remains so popular.