Higher Prices for NYRR Races

Buried in my e-mail from this morning was a pleasant note from NYRR (OK, a form letter), informing me that race prices are going to go up.

"We love to stage races for you and we would like you to join us as often as you can. Thus, we've worked hard to keep your costs as reasonable as possible. While our costs require us to raise the prices of our weekly races, we have made every effort to keep those increases modest —especially for our members. Our new race pricing, for races in April and beyond, will be posted on our website starting February 5.

I'm poking around the site, and not finding any specific mention about this, but to put in perspective, NYRR members had to pay $15, $20 or $25 for the Bronx Half, depending on when they registered, while non-members had to pay $10 more (i.e., it makes a lot of sense to become a NYRR member when the annual memership is $40, if you're planning a lot of races).

For the City Parks Foundation and the Scotland Run, both in April, the fees are $17, $22 or $25, according to the site, so if these are indicative, it means a price hike of at least 10 percent except for last-minute entries (where you end up paying more anyway.) One wonders if they could stop distributing cotton T-shirts if that would cut back on the race fees (though that might upset the sponsors).

BTW, the price for entry for the New York Marathon hasn't been posted - the application is supposed to be up mid-February - I've got to think we're going to see a jump for that as well.