Across the country, many road races are returning after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them into a two-year hiatus. But runners haven’t yet come back to those events in the same numbers as they were turning out in 2019.
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The BAA 10K in June had 5,144 finishers, down from 8,003 in 2019, a decrease of 35 percent.
The Utica Boilermaker 15K in July had 5,848 finishers, which was up from 2021, when it had 3,480, but down from the 2019 tally of 11,194, for a three-year decrease of 47 percent.
In Colorado, the Cherry Creek Sneak, a 5K, 5-miler, and 10-miler in Denver, had its final running in 2022 after 40 years. Combined participation in the three events had already been falling before the pandemic, and it fell an additional 38 percent between 2019 and 2022 (from 3,390 finishers to 2,092).
Larger, well-known events haven’t been immune from the declines. The Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run in April in Washington, D.C., had 2,700 fewer runners, for a decline of 15 percent.
The Falmouth Road Race in Massachusetts and the Beach to Beacon 10K in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, two popular destination summer road races, saw declines of 24 percent and 16 percent, respectively. The town of Falmouth reduced the field size of the race to 10,000 runners this year (from its usual 12,800) but only 8,610 finishers appear in the results.
Jean Knaack, CEO of the nonprofit Road Runners Club of America, wrote in an email to Runner’s World, “We are seeing a slow recovery in 2022, and we are tracking with participation data showing about 84 percent return.”
Why aren’t runners coming back to events? Industry experts cited many theories:
The economy: “I think inflation will be a factor for 2023 as events plan and people pick what events they can afford to run,” wrote Knaack. The cost of travel to races—for flights, hotels, rental cars, gas—has gone up. So, too, have race entry fees for many events, especially for runners who wait until the last minute to register.
Competing events: Long-postponed weddings are back on. So are family vacations. The annual road race might need to take a back seat this year.
COVID concerns: Many runners worry about contracting COVID at a race, or they get sick at an inopportune time, keeping them from the starting line.
Shifting priorities: Erin Vandenberg, 42, for years raced at least monthly, often more, at distances from 5K to the marathon. Running a race with coworkers and then getting drinks after in downtown Chicago was a common occurrence. But she always felt a certain pressure to be training hard and performing well, worried what the time read on the clock at the finish.
Since the pandemic, she has taken a new approach to running. “I want to enjoy it; not stress myself out about it,” she said. “I don’t know that getting up at 5 a.m. to hit a certain pace and worry whether I’m fueling correctly is how I want to spend my time.”
Vandenberg has run three races in 2022—including one with her dog.
Not every race is down. Michelle La Sala, president of race management company Blistering Pace, says two of the events her company works on—the Big Sur Marathon and the Napa Marathon—have emerged largely unscathed from the pandemic. Big Sur was down only 240 runners (6.8 percent) and registration is tracking strongly for 2023. Same for Napa, which “should grow significantly this year,” La Sala said.
The bigger “bucket list” marathons, with a few exceptions, are not having any problems at all, she said, while smaller, regional races, without a compelling point of differentiation, are “on the struggle bus.”
Grandma’s Marathon along Lake Superior in Minnesota was off only 6.4 percent in 2022 from its 2019 tally, and well up from 2021. The Eugene Marathon, in May in Oregon, and the Missoula Marathon, in June in Montana, were both well ahead in finisher numbers, although many might have been deferred entries from the cancellations of 2020 and 2021. Vandenberg has a deferred entry from the Chicago Marathon in 2020, and she plans to use it in 2023.
John Mortimer, owner and founder of Millennium Running in Bedford, New Hampshire, sounded an optimistic note as well. Millennium has 30 of its own events of varying distances, manages and times others, and it has a running store. Sales are strong at the retail location, showing him that people continue to walk and run, even those who took it up during the pandemic.
And race participation in Millennium events continues to be robust, in part, because the company developed a time trial start system during the pandemic as an alternative to a mass start race. For many months, they had the only events happening in New England.
The company kept in frequent contact with runners and tried to make the race experience safe and convenient for them. They continue to offer the option to make any race a virtual race, up until the last minute, if runners would otherwise have to be a no-show at an event—thereby ensuring the runners would at least be mailed their tee shirts and medals.
That policy will continue, Mortimer said. “Every week we’re shipping out apparel and medals and bibs,” he said. “We’re trying to make it easy for the participant to be a part of the running community.”
The effort aimed at keeping relevant has paid off, Mortimer said, and registrations for most of the company’s events haven’t declined. The same can’t be said, he knows, for races that have been off for two years.
For them, “It’s out of sight, out of mind,” he said. “People have moved on.”
Best Running Shoes 2025 is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World DAA Industry Opt Out, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
