London Marathon,ballot or hand picked?

I'm sure that the mice at the unseen university could do the job quite easily.

I think the computer has whiskers.

Bob Colclough 2 wrote (see)

Squeakz, as you have access to the database servers, is there any chance you can duplicate my entry 10,000 times so as to increase my chance of selection ? Of course, there would be a beeer in it for you !

I have been attempting to buy the dev' guys responsible for the ballot a beer for a while myself, purely out of technical curiousity you understand   I must admit they have not been tempted yet, which is also reasuring.
They also extensively log everything to ensure there is nothing unexpected happening and have a very very good setup
In all my dealings with the guys at realbuzz I find them to be professional and generally decent people, they also have a pretty good technical team who know what they are doing.

Thanks for the insights Squeakz, all makes a lot more sense.

I'd disagree on what you said about it being truly random, if its purely algorithmic, then ultimately its predictable, but really, that's not of interest/importance here.

I was thinking that it took an awful long time, from closing of the ballot to picking the winners, but I guess, they've got to at least wait for GFA (end of July?) and then its what 2/3 months till we find out, which I still thought was quite a wait. I'm putting that down to the logging you mentioned, I know in all my projects of any size logging and i/o are often large time sinks.

Shame about what you said about people not being able to guarantee themselves an entry. I was planning my 2013 entry to be the only rocket scientist on the Isles of Scilly with a sub 3:00 predicted finish time. Guess I'll have to actually get good at running and work on that GFA, which is about as likely as my aforementioned career and address change

Just out of interest, does anyone know or can anyone estimate roughly what percentage of aplicants are successful in the LM or other major UK marathons?

 I'm new to running but have an ultimate goal of running a marathon some time in the next couple of years and was hoping the LM would be a good starting point. Which is the best marathon for a begginer?

What do you class as other major UK marathons??

Most, if not all others are done on a first come, first serverd basis.... I have heard that you have a 14 to 1 chance of getting into London via the ballot..how true this is i don't know.

Alot of people including myself on here would say that other marathons are better then London anyway...Halstead gets my vote

It is not really a ballot in as much as if it was then the possibility is that all runners could finish between 3.30 and 4 hours - that doesnt happen

There is always a  steady stream of finishers. So I had haerd that all the time bracketts are put together and so many from each time brackett are picked. In fact I never put the time I expected to finish which was between 3.30 and 4 - I always put over 4.30 or under 3 - and I got in 10 times. This year put in true time and hey hoo rejection.

But not knocking its a great event but just think that its a shame its been taken over as a money making vehicle other than a serious race 

Squeakz

You contradict yoursef. Its not a true ballot if people are picked depending on what they put on the forms. If it was a true ballot then the possibilty of all finishers being between 4.00 and 4.30 would be a possibility

So in fact the ballot is a ballot in time frames ie its decided up front that there will be an even flow of runners so theres mini ballots within the time scales ie a ballot for all those putting 3.30 to 4 another for those putting 4.30 to 5

But of course I can understand why its done this way 

Actually you also need to factor in the number of places allotted to the overseas runner ballot, and the places given to the tour companies in each participating country. I've run London 6 times - only once through the ballot. Once I was a substitute runner for the Flora  team when they were the sponsors, one of their runners got injured and my brother who knew her offered me to take her place. The other times, as I live in Germany, I booked with a tour company on a package deal of flights, hotel, guaranteed entry and bus to the start.