The Mill Race Marathon reversed a declining trend in 2019 when it saw increased numbers of participants over the previous year in all three of its Saturday races.
But after the COVID-19 pandemic led to a virtual-only version of last year’s Mill Race events, registrants for this year’s marathon, half marathon and 5K are down from this point in 2019.
“With the virus rates going back up again, I don’t know whether people are going to start backing off, or if they have their vaccinations, if they’re going to be OK and come anyway,” race director Randy Stafford said.
The Mill Race Marathon committee charts entries each Wednesday leading up to the Sept. 25 races. As of this week, there were a combined 1,070 total entries (144 for the full marathon, 676 for the half marathon and 250 for the 5K).
That’s down from 1,575 total entries (169 for the marathon, 895 for the half marathon and 511 for the 5K) by this date in 2019. This year’s numbers are the lowest for late July in any year since the event began in 2013.
The 1,070 number, however, is down only 23 percent from the 1,381 who had registered by this point in 2018.
“Through mid-May, we were pretty much on the same trajectory as we had been in past years,” Stafford said. “Honestly, our initial assessment when we decided that we needed to go live this year was that we could be down 20 percent. We’d like to be better than that, but if we’re only down 20 percent, we’ve done well.”
Stafford said the Mill Race committee hasn’t been as aggressive in advertising and marketing this year’s races as it has in years’ past.
“One of the things that we fell down a little bit on was some of our advertising,” Stafford said. We’re picking that back up. We have some promotions that are going to go on here over the rest of the summer.”
The Mill Race is planning to do some advertising on social media and plans to have a booth today at the Farmers Market in Columbus. They had information on the Mill Race Marathon at some other road races this spring.
“I also look at registrations for other races that are happening, and this is a pretty common thing right now,” Stafford said. “I don’t know whether it’s that people are still a little hesitant (because of COVID). The older age groups seem to be registering at the rates we expect. It’s the younger age groups that aren’t signing up at the same rate. They may later. We just don’t know.”
A total of 3,267 runners and walkers crossed the finish line in 2019. That was up from 3,181 in 2018.
The inaugural races in 2013 saw by far the highest participation with 4,721 runners competing in the three races. A total of 2,830 had registered by this point that year.
