Quote:
Originally Posted by macker
Harvest Half increased from 750 to 1,000 people this year and sold out. Last Chance is only 500 and will sell out soon likely a day or two after the Harvest Half as many people who missed their goals will want to retool/reload  Not sure why they cap these at relatively low entries, but must be a liability reason. Not enough races this time of year and lots of people wanting to run before hibernating. |
When I was setting up the Millarville "Run To The Farmers' Market" Half Marathon, which debuted this year, I found the race calendar in the Fall to be pretty crowded, for my purposes at least.
If in the Fall, it had to happen before the final Farmers Market on Oct. 6 and you're in competition with major races from early September to the first weekend of October, including the Rocky Mountain Half, Melissa's and the Harvest Half. There's a new Half that just started in Cochrane and ran last weekend.
Its probably true that from the second weekend of October onward, there's not a lot on the calendar.
So we went to the Spring. We set it on the opening date of the Farmers Market in June, three weeks after the Calgary Marathon Weekend and three weeks before the Stampede Half, understanding that you're really marketing to the Calgary crowd and need to give them room to recover. It's one week after the Footstock Half and two weeks ahead of the High River Half.
We had 300 registrations the first year and will have a race cap of 750 for June 15, 2013. We'll probably be between 500 and 750 in year two judging from the very positive feedback we had. We'll take that race cap higher in future years.
I think we're the only point-to-point longer distance race in Alberta and one of the few in western Canada. These are popular in the USA. I haven't seen any other longer distance race in North America finishing at a large, operational Farmers' Market.
www.millarvillehalfmarathon.com We'll open for registrations in January. There's a video and photo gallery of the course there if you're interested.
Course record is 1:14 for men and 1:21 for women.
Some stats:
There are now more half marathon runners than there are 10 km runners in North America.
Sixty percent of half marathoners first ran the distance from 2009 onward.
Sixty percent of half marathoners are women. Sixty percent of full marathoners are men.
I would expect to see the distance in the Olympics at some point.
Cowperson