Chicago Marathon Switches to Lottery for Registration

Published by Runner's World on January 16, 2014

Registration for the 2014 Chicago Marathon will occur through a lottery instead of the first-come, first-served online process the race used in recent years.

The change comes after registration for the 2013 edition had to be stopped on the opening day, February 19, because of technical problems. Demand for the race's 40,000 available spots overloaded the Active.com registration system, and registration was suspended after three hours. Approximately 25,000 people were able to sign up while registration was open. The remaining spots were filled by a lottery conducted in early March.

The lottery for the 2014 marathon will run from March 5 to April 7. Registrants' names will be chosen at random to fill the race's quota of what it calls non-guaranteed entries; registrants will learn their entry status on April 14.

The race's field cap of 45,000 will include guaranteed entries. The marathon's site does not specify how many guaranteed and non-guaranteed entries there will be.