NYC Marathon – Getting In
The NYC Marathon selects ordinary runners by lottery. I’m sure this doesn’t apply to the Al Rokers and Chilean miners of the world, but whadda ya gonna do? It costs $11 bucks (non-refundable) to enter the lottery. If you get in, they automatically charge the $180 entrance fee to your credit card. If you fail to get in for three straight years, you receive an automatic entry for year four. I got in on my third try. The picks are made in the early part of Spring.
Casey on Easter 2010
This picture of Casey has nothing to do with the NYC Marathon.
I have to say that the entry money for the marathon gets you quite a bit. High class mailings begin right after you are accepted and continue occasionally till race time. Once you arrive in New York, you begin to see the tremendous cost of the marathon – blocking the streets, hiring hundreds of police officers, running shuttle buses to and from the Expo for three days, busing everyone out to the start line on Staten Island, setting up and running the start villages themselves – it’s a tremendous undertaking and must cost a large fortune.
By the way, those start villages are a sight to see. 45,000 runners are divvied up into three villages. Other marathons have corrals. NYC has villages. My village (Orange) was three times larger than the city in which I live. Each village looks something like a refugee camp, with 15,000 runners huddling together for warmth.
Anyway, getting into the Marathon is quite a thrill in itself.
Beautiful cursed earth 
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