I hated the experience. The crowds, the heat, being pushed and pulled, and not being able to move. I swore it would be my last live event. Why go live, when you can just listen to the music in your home in air conditioning?
Lollapalozza works well because it does what it does. It hypes you up weeks and months in advance to see you favorite groups, or performers do their thing every August in Grant Park. Concerts are all about hype, word of mouth, rumors about who is going to appear, and who isn't, and how you're going to get a chance to see it. Who knows when they will return? This might be the last time!!
This concept of hype, however, does not work well with Marathons.
Take this last week the registration debacle with the Chicago Marathon. Last year, 45,000 slots sold in 6 days, broke the previous record by 24 days. And I guess the Chicago marathon, and the Bank of America, the main sponsors, wanted to beat that record. So, 30,000 slot sold in 4 hours, and crashed the website. 15,000 slots will be sold, whenever. Maybe on February 28th.
What was the reason? Is this the last Chicago Marathon or something? Probably not.
Is something special happening this year with the marathon? Nope.
Will there be special T-shirts? Nope.
Is there anything different from last years marathon? Yeah, it's costs 40 bucks more, for some reason.
Because the Chicago Marathon has sold out every year for the last decade. So who were they trying to impress?
Runners don't like hype. We run in bad weather and at night. We want to sign up for races when we want, how we want. And if we miss a deadline, or the race sells out, then that was our fault for not being smarter about it. We want to run the race, get our medal, get our beer, go home, look at our time on the Garmin Website, and eat everything in our freezer, and then waddle around looking for acknowledgement. That's it.
Running is about the runner, running. Nothing more. And we run without fanfare, without a crowd, even without a pat on the back.
Chicago Marathon sold itself like a Lady Gaga concert. Hype. Same race, same town, same course. 40 bucks more. And no Lady Gaga.
Hype.
Will I sign up? I'm not sure, but on the same day in October, there are 19 other marathons going on around the US. And you know what?
I could sign up for all of them right now. Their registration pages work.
