Columbus marathon finisher numbers drop more than 40% in 3 years

Stop being an elitist jerk. They worked their butt off and trained just as hard as you did for their 7 hour finish. It's not their fault they aren't gifted or naturally talented. They earned the right to put that 26.2 sticker on the back of their car.

From a local perspective, a lot of people that used to run it have gotten tired over the last 8 years or so of all the changes that have went on. I used to think it was being positioned to be bought by Competitor Group, so that we have RnR Columbus. Or that it is the top of the next tier of American marathons after NYC, Boston, and Chicago.

Not saying any of that would be wrong, but it means stricter rules, more cost, more people, less pleasant starting experience. I see now they have put in some sort of transfer ability, but that wasn't the case before. No transfers, no deferrals, blah blah blah. It seemed impersonal to me. To be honest some of the RnR races I've done were better from that perspective.

The old start and finish were cooler, but still not all that easy to get to. I ran the last time the start was at state house and it was a cluster f*** to get to the A corral. Just way difficult.

The course is fine. It's a good honest course, maybe even considered a fast course. It's not super scenic, after all Columbus downtown really is only about a mile long up High St.

mango lassitude wrote:

TheStat wrote:

Chicago has gone from 37k to 40k to 44k this year.

What are they doing right?

wow, Chicago has approximately 20x more participants than spectators; that's gotta be close to a record.

Apt too where the winner clocks 2:09 plus but certain morans want to pretend it's a "virtual" 2:03.

Major marathons are simply more appealing. That's it. B level marathons are not going to get that type of interest, except from runners who are trying to qualify for a major marathon. I'm noticing that a lot of local marathon races are switching to a half marathon - 5k/10k format, so that the event is quicker and to get more participants.

Brilliant post. I'm the perfect example in a weird way. Now that I have zero shot of my PRs, training a lot seems pointless and I've gone to more yoga classes in the last two years than group ones.

The most important number is registrants, not finishers. If reg numbers are down significantly, then that's where you start having issues.

A few key things for these small to mid sized marathons - I've run a few (Green Bay, Champaign, IL, Indianapolis, Quad Cities, Fox Valley (IL), Naperville (pacing), and then the Half at Colfax (Denver).

The best ones were the most organized. Logical expo/packet pickup, well laid out course (not a bunch of random turns in neighborhoods) with good markings, good post-race, and most importantly, consistency. They also had "elite" entries that were open enough to allow for local sub-elite to sign up and be competitive and there were plenty of water/gatorade stops on the course.

The worst ones weren't that well organized. Courses wondered endlessly through neighborhoods and were boring, the course wasn't well marked or well supported (by both spectators and support crew), etc.

One on that list, Naperville Marathon doesn't have a full anymore. The first 3 years of the race, the course completely changed all 3 times. They also started out trying to charge $180 or something for it.

I partly agree that what we're seeing is a natural result of the participatory movement in running. Running isn't fun unless you actually become a runner. Groups like Team in Training proved that you can drag just about anyone around a marathon course if you keep it open long enough, but that has to be a miserable experience. People were willing to do it once or twice because it provides them with validation (both internal and external). But once everyone has done a marathon, then it cheapens the validation. So why would I do something so unpleasant if nobody is going to be impressed and I can't even feel that good about myself afterward.

I also don't think we should discount the real world versions of X_Fit_guy_the_real_one. There are a lot of people (doctors, NYT science writers, fitness charlatans) who have been ripping on running for a while now. Regardless of whether people are buying into what these people are sayi wholesale, I think it's having an effect. My brother's wife, who used to run all the time, has expressed her concern about running and her cortisol levels, and she's doing a lot of other stuff now, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, though it is based on some incorrect premises.

It's when you talk about your training group as an example that you've lost me. There are a lot of fitness trends out there that are competing with running, but they're mostly going for people who are only casually into being fit. A "training group," even a fairly casual training group, represents a pretty narrow subset of the running population, which probably has little effect on race participation numbers. In my experience, most of these groups are filled by people who have a talent for running. They gravitated towards a group because they realized that they were good (i.e., they were within range of a BQ very shortly after starting running), and people like to do things that they're good at.

As for your group aging, that's what happens to literally every club, whether it's a running club, a chess club, or a country club. People gravitate towards clubs with their peers, and they age together. Your running club might be full of guys in their 30s (mine is too, and we're all married with kids now), but there's probably another running group--or perhaps a running "crew"--nearby that's much younger.

Exactly. Here too. Furthermore, I can finally afford a 200 dollar entry fee, but I'll be darned if I'll pay that much to run a race.

Ran last year and this year, very well organized only complaint would be missing a few mile markers.

Surprised it's dropping in runner's seeing as the finishers metal is about 4"x4" and seriously weights about 6 pounds.

Couldn't agree more. Lower the prices but also have a race when the starting temp is 32 degrees, not 60. Btw it was 32 degrees for Columbus 3 years ago.

Yeah but how many starters were there?

800 dude wrote:

It's when you talk about your training group as an example that you've lost me. There are a lot of fitness trends out there that are competing with running, but they're mostly going for people who are only casually into being fit. A "training group," even a fairly casual training group, represents a pretty narrow subset of the running population, which probably has little effect on race participation numbers. In my experience, most of these groups are filled by people who have a talent for running. They gravitated towards a group because they realized that they were good (i.e., they were within range of a BQ very shortly after starting running), and people like to do things that they're good at.

The majority of runners aren't very good. Just look at your average marathon time. In the 30-34 age group, only 234 men ran a BQ time under 3:05, out of 3300. The Median time is 4:16. Same thing with 25-29, just over 200 BQ out of 2500 with a 4:17 median time. That's 9:45/mile pace.

The Chicago Shamrock Shuffle 8k median time was 50:02, so essentially 10:00/mile pace.

Hell, most of the local running groups I've run with are full of people who aren't that good. You do have sub-elite groups and such, but I'd say that most of the local ones (especially ones that meet at running stores) are full of these 4+ hour marathoners.

In this area, the Portland Marathon has seen a steady decline in finishers over the past 4 years or so. This year I think it was fewer than 3000 finishers, down from something like 7000 at its peak.

In addition, the Vancouver, USA marathon, which is right across the river, had been growing steadily since its inception, and this year they canceled the whole event because hardly anyone had registered.

There are some outside influences to both of these races getting smaller (Vancouver was too short one year, Portland was too long, and Portland's race management is a disaster in general), but it's interesting that it may be part of a larger trend.

The full marathons that added the half years ago have almost all been seeing huge growth in the half field while the full marathons have dwindled. Nothing new, folks are transitioning to the half; less training, less recovery with the ability to run more often.

I imagine that I'm not the only participant who avoids some marathons I used to really enjoy because of the need to fork over substantial entry fees months in advance. I like to see the weather report a few days prior and also confirm that I'm healthy before signing up. It was actually possible not that long ago to wait until pretty close to race day to register for marathons like Chicago and Philly but that is no longer possible with so many bucket-listers filling the field months in advance.

Meanwhile, the Monumental marathon in Indy (3 weeks after Cbus, with a similar tour-of-downtown course) sold out very early.

Why pay to run slow when I can do pick up soccer a couple of times a week for free, meet nice people, and have a good workout?

andicamp wrote:

In this area, the Portland Marathon has seen a steady decline in finishers over the past 4 years or so. This year I think it was fewer than 3000 finishers, down from something like 7000 at its peak.

In addition, the Vancouver, USA marathon, which is right across the river, had been growing steadily since its inception, and this year they canceled the whole event because hardly anyone had registered.

There are some outside influences to both of these races getting smaller (Vancouver was too short one year, Portland was too long, and Portland's race management is a disaster in general), but it's interesting that it may be part of a larger trend.

See my post on the prior page. A lot of these races have common issues with consistency, courses or management. I also forgot to mention you do need to look at comparing dates. It looks like Vancouver was 3 weeks before Portland. Looking at the weather for that race week, it looks you had quite a few days in the 80's or 90's. Meanwhile 3 weeks later, Portland's weather was 65 on race day. Given this hotter weather, if I were training for a marathon, why would I train all that much just to have a hot race day? Portland looks more appealing to me just because of the weather. Not to mention, those two races compete against each other. Pretty much no one is going to do both. Instead, move one to the spring and have the other remain in the fall. It's what happened to Indanapolis -- They had a full marathon in the middle of October and then Monumental the first weekend of November. The one in October ended up shutting down and only being a half.

Now you also have to look at the local running population. How many marathoners are there exactly? How many of those are going to do races out of state (Chicago, NY, CIM, etc) vs run a local hometown race? How many of those are repeat marathoners doing the race more than once? Personally, for a full marathon, I wouldn't mind doing it twice, but after 2x, there's so many cool races, that I don't want to do it more than that. Even Chicago (which I hate), there's no way you'd get me to go back and run that a third time as I'm bored with it. Races like Chicago, it doesn't matter as you'll always have more people wanting to run than you can allow, thus lottery and qualifying. But small races only have so much appeal. Sure, you'll get some people from out of state to come in and run it. But unless there's something specifically interesting or unique about your race, you're not going to have a huge out of state crowd. So then you're relying on local runners. Which after their 2nd or 3rd time doing the race, they might not be interested anymore or might move on to other non-running activities or stop running full marathons. So your race gets smaller and smaller.

Then let's look at competition. That's what really brings in people. Indianapolis Monumental is known to be flat and fast. You see a ton of crazy fast half marathon times with people flying in from all over the US to race there. Looking at Portland, my mediocre time from Berlin where I was in the 600's would have been top 10. My PR would have won one of the years. That, and the course is a freaking out and back. Better for spectators, but I'm sure that gets boring, especially if you've run it more than once.

juan wrote:

Meanwhile, the Monumental marathon in Indy (3 weeks after Cbus, with a similar tour-of-downtown course) sold out very early.

Funny enough I know a couple people from my Columbus pubrunning groups that skipped Columbus to run Indy.

Could the half being canceled due to weather earlier this year have anything to do with it?

I think this city gravitates more toward halfs than fulls from what I've seen. In the past month there was 3 halfs scheduled.

As far as the age group thing I have noticed that there is very few people that are in their early to mid 20s in my groups. I'm usually one of the younger ones with the majority being in their early 30s to 40s.

Half witt wrote:

I imagine that I'm not the only participant who avoids some marathons I used to really enjoy because of the need to fork over substantial entry fees months in advance. I like to see the weather report a few days prior and also confirm that I'm healthy before signing up. It was actually possible not that long ago to wait until pretty close to race day to register for marathons like Chicago and Philly but that is no longer possible with so many bucket-listers filling the field months in advance.

It's not bucket listers, it's because most of these big marathons have registration half a year (or almost a full year, like Chicago) in advance. The marathon then takes the money and most likely puts it into some type of CD or savings account to gain interest. Assuming the $200 entry fee for Chicago and the 44k registrants, that's $8.8 million. Keep that 8.8 million in there for 6 months at a lowly 1%, and you've made $44,000 in interest. That's probably the salary of one of the full-time workers.

Chicago used to have registration around Feb. By moving it back 3 months earlier, they could gain another 20-30k in interest (or more).

Hunke wrote:

lkjy wrote:

WhoTF wants to run a marathon in Ohio? I wouldn't even want to visit Ohio.

Along with what has been said about the increase in number of races, and the (perhaps temporary) decline in trendiness for bucket-listers, I think a lot of people really want to do the whole destination-marathon experience.

For example, They'll fly to Boston on the Thursday before the race, check out the sites, go to some breweries or some famous seafood place, post about it on their facebook, then they'll run the race on Monday. They get a 'culturally-enriching' vacation and a notch on their belt for running a marathon with 'AMAZING energy from the crowd at mile 21 that kept me going'.

You can't do that in Akron.

I agree, that's definitely part of it. But having run Akron several times and loving it, and living on the east coast, it's hard to convince people to run Akron when they see the course is challenging. They'd rather go to a race like Steamtown, also not a touristy place, just due to the easier course.