Sports execs frequently lament the 'busy sports schedule' as if its a problem. Just too much going on. Too many great things. Take Boston's schedule alone.
BC just won the NCAA Frozen Four, Celtics Playoffs; Bruins Game 7 vs The Habs; Red Sox Patriot's Day game and season long dominance of the city; NE Patriots prepping for the NFL Draft and, oh yeah, THE BOSTON MARATHON.
Here's a great piece from today's WSJ on-line on the special entry for the marathon which highlights 1,200+ runners who raise money for charity. My brother-in-law did it for the NYC marathon last November and it was inspiring. Here ya go:
MARATHON'S BIG DIG for DONATIONS:
Vincent Franks isn't the typical Boston Marathon runner. He would never actually qualify for an official number by time. His 2004 attempt to finish the race running as a "bandit" without an official entry ended prematurely. Exhausted after 23 miles, he looked so bad that his wife -- and the paramedics -- made him stop.
Today, the 30-year-old financial planner is making his second attempt at finishing the storied 26.2-mile race -- this time as one of 1,275 so-called "charity runners" who had the qualifying standards officially waived. Mr. Franks guaranteed $3,000 to Bottom Line, a nonprofit for disadvantaged youth, in exchange for one of its 15 slots in the 2008 race. "I decided to do it the right way," he says.
Runners have long regarded Boston as the pre-eminent marathon in the world. Unlike almost all of the other 350 marathons held in the U.S. last year, Boston maintains strict qualifying times and requirements. Generally, a man in the 18-to-34-year-old age bracket must complete a marathon within the year and a half of the 2008 race in at least 3 hours, 10 minutes, a notch not far below professional.
But there's an exception made for charity runners, the backers of one of the 24 official charities who agree to raise funds or cut checks themselves in order to run the race. They must pledge to bring in at least $3,000 apiece -- and their credit-card numbers are charged for any shortfalls.
Since 2004, charity money generated through the Boston Marathon has jumped by nearly 50% to more than $10 million, while the number of charity runners who had the qualifying standards waived increased by only about 85 people, or around 7%, according to the Boston Athletic Association, which oversees the race. (Not all charity money raised through the marathon comes from exempted runners.)
The increased donations can be attributed to the demand for those rare slots, and the lengths runners will go to for them. Children's Hospital Trust, which has been affiliated with the Boston Marathon for 12 years, received 470 applicants for the 2008 race -- roughly twice the 225 official places it got for 2008. The Dana-Farber Cancer Center, which has 550 runners this year, including some who qualified on their own, had hundreds of people on its waiting list. Many charities will cherry-pick applicants, looking for those with the most ambitious fund-raising goals and detailed plans for getting the funds.
Patty Heisler, a 36-year-old customer service rep for Verizon, says getting one of the charity slots for Boston is "like applying for school." In 2006, Ms. Heisler applied to run for Dana-Farber and even attended a networking event "to show my interest." But she was turned down. Last fall, she applied for the 2008 race through Casa Myrna Vazquez, a local non-profit that supports survivors of domestic violence. It had 40 applicants for 13 slots -- Ms. Heisler landed one of them.
The The BAA first began giving out numbers to charity runners in 1989 when just the Leukemia Foundation was involved.
Charities have to apply and sometimes wait years to get an allotment of numbers. "It's almost like writing a grant proposal," says Nathalie Favre-Gilly, spokeswoman for Casa Myrna Vazquez. Most official charities are on a three-year rotation.
Greater competition among casual runners for the limited charity slots in Boston has prompted charities to push their individual runners to raise bigger and bigger sums. New Yorker Roy Marden put down on his application to run for Dana-Farber in 2007 that he might be able to raise $5,000. But the charity convinced him to raise the bar, to $7,400. He wound up raising more than $10,000 -- thanks partly to donations by friends whose employers have a matching grant program -- and completed the marathon in 4:45:04 last year.
Some elite runners aren't crazy about sharing the course with slow pokes, even those contributing to a good cause. Boston is "just another marathon that has been ruined by six-hour charity cases," wrote Angry Runner from North Carolina, at the Web site marathonguide.com, adding that he or she had "no desire to go back to Boston to run with a bunch of walkers."
Guy Morse, executive director of the BAA, says the race intentionally limits the number of charity runners to about 5% of the total participants to preserve the integrity of the experience for other runners. Charity runners also start in back of the qualifiers so they won't slow the other runners down, he points out.
Tom Hynes decided to forgo the stress of soliciting donations from others and will just fork over the $3,000 to Casa Myrna Vazquez himself. "I would never qualify time-wise" for Boston, says the 71-year-old chief executive of the Boston real estate firm Collier, Meredith & Grew, adding that his best marathon time to date, 4:15, was years ago. He says running for a charity is "the best of both worlds -- you help a good cause and it's a great personal achievement too." On Friday he decided his knees couldn't take the pounding. He will make the donation and bike the course instead.
The author of this story was Vanessa O'Connell at vanessa.o'connell@wsj.com
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