This August, marathon hopefuls across the city found an unpleasant surprise in their email inboxes. Race fees were going up, and a popular selection process known as 9 1, which guaranteed marathon entry to anyone who ran nine races and volunteered at another, was being overhauled; there would now be a lottery just for the chance to participate in next year’s program. Also, thousands of available slots were being cut. The resulting wrath, rippling through run clubs and forums, had a clear and familiar target: New York Road Runners.

The marathon itself, held annually on the first Sunday in November, is one of the city’s most democratic mass parties, and this year brings the 50th anniversary of its populist five-borough course. Yet NYRR is increasingly perceived as the race’s authoritarian overlord. As the marathon’s parent organization, it has the thorny job of deciding who gets to run and, faced with a worldwide running boom, that task has never been more contentious. A record number of people applied to run the marathon this year and a record number of them were rejected, fueling frustration not simply about the process but about who actually has the resources to run NYRR’s races. “Between watching your computer all day to try to get into races before they sell out and all the fees, it feels like these races are becoming more elite all the time,” says Stephanie Fidis, a 33-year-old who works in publishing and has run NYRR races since 2018. “Unfortunately, the way NYRR is organizing things, it’s starting to feel a little bit more like a money grab,” another runner says.

Rob Simmelkjaer is well aware of the griping. The NYRR CEO, sitting inside his fifth-floor office across the street from Carnegie Hall, comes across as savvy and genial, but he’s irritated by the suggestion that he leads a cold-blooded money machine. “If we were a for-profit organization that was focused on maximizing our revenue, we could charge twice or more for races,” Simmelkjaer says. “And there’s probably enough price elasticity that we could do that and still be sold out, and we could probably have revenues that are close to double what we have now. But we don’t make that choice,........

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