Who's waiting for the London Marathon ballot ?

1 lurker | 24 watchers

Markoid Oct 2018 2:36pm, 10 Oct 2018 17 posts	0 Markoid Lost my GFA when they changed the goalposts and entered the ballot. It was a no.
Pothunter Oct 2018 3:07pm, 10 Oct 2018 656 posts	0 Pothunter Frag, I’m at Greenwich parkrun. We usually supply 60 people which cover 5 or 6 trucks.
sallykate Oct 2018 3:08pm, 10 Oct 2018 5,684 posts	0 sallykate Interesting PH - we tried to offer more last year but were capped at 30 for three trucks.
Pothunter Oct 2018 3:23pm, 10 Oct 2018 657 posts	0 Pothunter Must be 6 then
Serendippily Oct 2018 3:34pm, 10 Oct 2018 9,406 posts	0 Serendippily MrS has got in via the ballot three times in 10 years and then won the FERC ballot another year. He isn’t unusually lucky in other competitions but he’s a definite case for reserving ballot spaces for newbies
Marvin Oct 2018 3:58pm, 10 Oct 2018 71 posts	0 Marvin RE: Donations and chances of getting a place. You definitely do have an increased chance of gaining a place in the race if you offer to donate your entry fee; "It is a totally random ballot with no weighting....... During the entry process, applicants are asked if they would like to bequeath their entry fee to the London Marathon Charitable Trust if they are not successful in the ballot. All applicants who opt to bequeath their entry fee and do not get a place in the initial ballot are then entered into the Lucky Bequest draw which, again, is a random draw. This offers another 1,000 places."
larkim Oct 2018 4:35pm, 10 Oct 2018 5,803 posts	0 larkim Ah, good spot. So without knowing what the %age of applicants who bequeath is (let's arbitrarily assume 50%?) their chance goes from 17,500 in 414,000 (4.2%) to (17500/414000 + 1000/((414000-17500)*50%) = 4.2% + 0.5% = 4.7%. If bequeaths become smaller (say 10% of all applicants?) it would increase from the basic 4.2% to 6.7%. Higher, but still fairly small.
larkim Oct 2018 4:36pm, 10 Oct 2018 5,804 posts	0 larkim (waiting for someone to unpick my probability calculations!)
DocMoye Oct 2018 5:08pm, 10 Oct 2018 24,498 posts	0 DocMoye someone locally I have seen on facebook seems to have got one of those places
mattglen_ Oct 2018 5:20pm, 10 Oct 2018 55 posts	0 mattglen_ What we have to remember each ballot entry you do is independent to any other year, so the phrase "once in 25 years" can only be used loosely.