How did you enter a race before the internet?

Local running store bulletin board. The colorful flyers were the better races. Gave the date, race distance, address of the start/finish, and what the age divisions were. $6-8 was the norm, and we'd often put up a stink if the entry was $10.

I remember having to apply for a cheque book from the bank for the sepecific purpose of entering a local 10 miler who only accepted cheques sent by post.

Happy Days

The local newspaper (San Jose Mercury News) sponsored the first 10Ks that I ran. We clipped out the entry form from the newspaper, filled in our information, wrote a check for the entry fee (around $5 in the early '80s), and then snail mailed it in. At least for some races, we got the race numbers, safety pins, and detailed race information (like parking, route, etc.) back in the mail ahead of the race.

There were regional and local running magazines that would announce their races. Some did it for the entire year and others on a more quarterly schedule.

Runners World magazine usually had the larger races in their events section towards the back of the magazine listed by US region. There were also ads for races as well.

Some races you just showed up the day of and paid your entry fee. $5 was pretty standard in the late 70's through early 80's. Some you had to pre-register for usually at a running shop.

Big events you had to mail in your entry by a certain date. I registered for the Peachtree road race by mail in 1982. Around 25,000 entrants that year.

Back then you didn't get finisher medals. Only trophies for overall, top 3, and some age group awards. The first age groups were 0-39, 40 and over, all male of course. For females, no age groups, just females. That started to change in the late 70's.

No such thing as a "swag bag" then.

I remember the "timing system." Everybody had a tear-off portion of their race number with their name, age, and sex on it. When you finished, someone in the chute tore it off and put it on a spool. When the spool got full enough, they traded it for an empty one and continued the process. Meanwhile, someone else took the original spool and, one by one, pulled off a number and pinned it to a big board. The board was labeled with headings for "Overall Male," "Overall Female," "15-19 Male," etc. They just pinned the tag under the appropriate heading. The board was the only results list. God help you if it was a windy day - just hope the tags were pinned on very well. Nobody had cell phone cameras so sometimes you would see people copying the results by hand into a notebook.

I forgot - another person would hand write the time of each finisher as they finished. This list was then matched up with the order of the tags on the spool to get finishing times for each runner.

Mail in entry form. Or show up on race day and wait in line to register. At the finish line, you were given a tongue depressor/popsicle stick with your time on it. You then wrote your name down and gave it to the timing table.

Others have noted local newspapers, running club newsletters, running store flyers, word of mouth.

Also I can remember showing up to races and registering the morning of (no extra fees). I once showed up at a race having sent in my fee. They did not have it. They gave me a bib and and I paid. The RD said that if my check showed up he would just tear it up. And he did as best I can tell since the check I had mailed was never deposited.

Did dinosaurs ever interfere with these races? I'd be pooping my pants if a t-rex ran by!

Great question.

You had to start with one race. Getting the info from the newspaper or running magazine. Then at any race there was a table with leaflets about other races. So you took home a couple of those.

There were booklets with races for the whole year.
You wrote to the race organizer and they sent you the leaflet for the signup. Which included the form you had to mail back to sign up for it.

If you wanted results, you had to bring a stamped envelope with your address so that they could sent you a results list. You could expect a month to get those.

Now you are pissed when the results are not up when the last runners have crossed the finish line. Those where the times when runners where fast and the results delivery where slow.
That was at least my experience from 1984-2000.

Flyers would be on your windshield after races, or you'd just go to the same place the next year on the date that matched.

You could often find advertisements for races in the local newspaper. Results would often be published the day after races in the back pages of the sports section.

you would join a local running club and it would have a race every week. Often at the same exact time and place, or they would cycle it around. People would tell you where the next one was. They weren't fancy about timing or prizes, but they would publish your results.

there were little half-size newspapers for every urban sub district, where they would put announcements. Cheaper than the big city paper.

Often, you could register on race day. If you were running a workout or didn't want anyone to know your times and you were out of town, you paid cash and signed your "name". My personal favorite was Tyco Brahe, and no, I did not have a gold-tipped nose, so no one ever knew who I was.

Those were the days. I still have a bunch of newspaper clippings containing results from my races from newspapers in the 1990s.

I often just went to the race and signed up on the spot. You might send a stamped, self addressed envelope to the race director. He'd put an entry form in the envelope and mail it back to you, then you'd fill out the form and mail it back with a check to cover the entry fee. When running shops started opening up they usually had entry blanks for local races that you could take.

For me, pre-interweb, either flyers at running stores or handed out at races. You would mail in a check (bigger races) or register at the race (smaller race),

As one runner noted, yes the flyers on your car windshield after the race. Miss those days. I recall parking next to Craig Virgin once and he and I were flipping through the upcoming race options.

The same way you did everything before there was internet.