{"id":1571,"date":"2016-03-30T14:24:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T18:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2016-03-30T14:29:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T18:29:22","slug":"playing-the-odds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=1571","title":{"rendered":"Playing the Odds"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m hoping to run the St. George Marathon<\/a> in Utah on October 1st. It’s a lottery system and I haven’t been doing so well with lotteries of late. But the course is famous for being a net downhill and a great opportunity to hit your Boston Qualifying time. I’d love to make that happen this year and my calendar is such for the first part of October that I’d be coming off a two week lull in races due to other fun commitments. The St George lottery doesn’t open until April 1st.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I saw a posting for a race in North Dakota also being held on October 1st. It’s a trail race which I’m not always a fan of, and it’s not the easiest of towns to get to… albeit when I check travelmath.com it’s only 9 miles from Bismarck. Still, Bismarck isn’t that easy to get to either.<\/p>\n

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But here’s the thing about this race — it’s $10 to register. I figure if I do get into St. George, well, then I’m out a Hamilton. And if I don’t get in, well, I have an option for October 1st. Even if I choose NOT to go without any other race booked, a rarity as once I’ve plunked down my cash for registration I invariably try to make it to the starting line, illness, common sense, or various scheduling and travel snafus be damned, even then I’d still only be out 10 bucks.<\/p>\n

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I’m mostly frugal but this felt like a gamble worth taking.\u00a0 After all, the $10 guaranteed entry to this race was a buck less than the lottery fee for NYC… wherein if I had “won” the lottery I’d get to pay another $255 for a race bib.\u00a0 Sure, sure… I’d love to have gotten to run NYC (and may yet if I decide to go the charity fundraising route).\u00a0 But this is a guaranteed bib for a marathon race for $10.\u00a0 Ten dollars!<\/p>\n

So what’s it going to be wheels of fate?\u00a0 Downhill Utah or Trail Running North Dakota?\u00a0 Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m hoping to run the St. George Marathon in Utah on October 1st. It’s a lottery system and I haven’t been doing so well with lotteries of late. But the course is famous for being a net downhill and a great opportunity to hit your Boston Qualifying time. I’d love to make that happen this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[499,501,498,494,495,500,497,420,496],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-499","tag-bucks","tag-dakota","tag-gamble","tag-george","tag-hamilton","tag-north","tag-st","tag-utah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}