“Forget the lottery. Bet on yourself instead.” –Brian Koslow

What are the odds of running Chi-Town?

When I wanted to sign up for the Chicago Marathon in 2009, it was pretty straightforward. I jumped on the website, filled out the registration form, gave ‘em my credit card info and just like that, I was good to go.

The times they are a changing.

This week the Chicago Marathon joined the growing trend of races moving from open registration to the lottery method.

The switch comes in the wake of last year’s snafu where the Active.com registration site for the Chicago Marathon crashed due to the mad rush of applicants on opening day. BTW, here’s hoping Active.com used that “hard-earned” convenience fee we begrudgingly pay each race to upgrade their servers.

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