OVER 300,000 ENTERED NYRR RACES LAST YEAR
By David Monti
(c) 2008 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved

NEW YORK (16-Jan) -- The New York Road Runners are celebrating their 50th
anniversary this year, and the group of about 40 runners who founded the
organization dedicated to improving the world through running and walking back in 1958
could never have imagined how it would have grown. The nonprofit NYRR now has
45,000 members, and last year 309,003 runners signed up for their year-round
calendar of 62 events. 230,702 athletes of all ages and abilities finished their
races.

By far their biggest event was the ING New York City Marathon. Over 100,000
runners requested entry, but only about half that number were accepted through a
system of lotteries, guaranteed entries based on performance and participation
in other NYRR races, charity groups, and international tour groups. Through
the normal process of attrition, entries dwindled to around 40,000 by race week,
and 38,607 actually finished the 42.195 km event from Staten Island to
Manhattan. That made it the largest standard marathon in history.

Their second largest event was the NYC Half-Marathon presented by NIKE last
August, which had 9,927 finishers. The NYRR routinely holds events with more than
4,000 finishers, mostly in Manhattan's Central Park.

The NYRR also hosted two national championships last year. The first was the
USA Men's 8-K Championship last March, won by steeplechaser Anthony Famiglietti,
and then the USA Olympic Team Trials - Men's Marathon last November, won by
Ryan Hall. One hundred eighty of America's top athletes competed in these two
races. The NYRR will again host the USA Men's 8-K Championship on March 15.

The 2008 NYRR calendar will be just as robust. Of particular interest in the
near term will be the Empire State Building Run-Up, an invitational race where
athletes climb 1,576 steps to the 86th floor observatory of New York City's
tallest building.