First they got rained out of the New York City Marathon, and now they’re getting soaked.
The New York Road Runners sent out e-mails this month laying out options to the 47,000 runners who signed up for the Nov. 4 race that got wiped out in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
One option is to get a guaranteed NYC Marathon spot within the next three years. The only catch — you’ll have to pay another entry fee of more than $200 — in addition to the already-paid 2012 fee.
“It’s just not the right thing to do,” said Michael Sarni, who planned to run his first NYC Marathon last year. “You’d think people would want to do the right thing.”
Sarni, 30, of Hamilton, NJ, not only paid the $255 non-member registration fee, he also raised $2,620 for the Team for Kids charity to secure a spot in the 2012 race. About $300 of what he raised came out of his own pocket.
The other options offered by the Road Runners, a nonprofit with more than $50 million a year in annual revenue, also didn’t appeal to Sarni.
One is a refund of the registration fee minus an $11 processing fee with no guaranteed entry into a future race. The other is guaranteed entry into next year’s NYC Half-Marathon — for which he’d have to pay as well, while also forfeiting his 2012 marathon fee.