Broad Street Run 2013 Lottery Is Open

As of this morning at 12:01 a.m., the first-ever Broad Street Run lottery is officially open for business. Before you bum-rush the website, don’t panic—the lottery will remain open until 11:59 on Friday, February 15th, so you have plenty of time to get your name in.

Here’s how it works: Go to the registration page and enter your information (including your credit card number), just like you have every other year. Note that your card will only be charged the $40 registration fee if you are accepted for entry into the May 5th race. Confirmed participants will be posted on broadstreetrun.com by 10 a.m. on February 19th. In addition, all lottery registrants will receive an email saying whether or not they were selected.

In order to mitigate web-server crashes, race officials are asking that people follow a lottery-entry schedule based on their last name. Your odds aren’t diminished if you get your name in later rather than sooner. The suggested schedule is as follows:

Last names between A and F: register on February 4th and 5th
Last names between G and L: register on February 6th and 7th
Last names between M and R: register on February 8th and 9th
Last names between S and Z: register on February 10th and 11th
All others register on February 12th through 15th

You’ll notice a new option this year to register as a group, a move to allow runners who plan to train and run together to all be selected for registration. Groups of between two and five runners can sign up together. If the group is selected, all runners in that group get bibs; if the group is rejected, no one does. The registration form includes an option to join an existing group or to start a group.

As promised, veteran runners (defined as those who’ve participated in 10 Broad Street Runs, either consecutively or not) are able to score guaranteed entry into the race. You must first enter the lottery with everyone else, but if you’re not selected, you have the option to get a guaranteed bib, so long as you put in for it before March 1st.

You can check on whether you qualify as a veteran here. Don’t panic (as I did) when your name only shows up one time for one race year in the search results; click on your name when it appears and you should see a readout of all your race years and finish times. If for some reason one of your races doesn’t show up (i.e. if you ran under a different name), you can send an email to bsrveterans@aol.com to sort it out.