I am going to say about 2009 when it really started getting stupid with virtually every bigger race wanting registration months in advance or selling out.
I got tired of it and bolted to trail races but so did everybody else and now they are even worse because they have very small limits of how many runners can be on the trail.
I wanted to run the Crazylegs Classic 8k a few years ago, but since I hadn't run it before, I would have had to start with runners much slower. They must have had a lot of complaints though because I just checked the site and you can now put a time of 29 minutes in as the fastest. Before I thought it was really slow like 35 minutes so I didn't want to have to race it twice just to be able to run with other runners comparable to me. (It's about 10 hours away) Even at 29:00, that would suck for a 25 or 26 minute guy who just wanted to run it one year. He would have to spend the first mile passing a bunch of slower runners.
I ran a 5k in October and registration is already open for next year.
My solution has been cutting my racing in half. Just too much hassle to deal with and the races you can just show up and race want double the early bird rate or are non competitive.