MANCHESTER, CT – Registered runners for the 88th edition of the Manchester Road Race have surpassed 12,000, making the 2024 edition the largest in half a dozen years.

Early Wednesday morning, the Manchester Road Race Committee announced that a total of 12,116 runners had registered for the Thanksgiving Day event. It is the largest number of runners registered for the 4,737-mile road race since 2018, when there were 12,425. Last Thanksgiving, 11,060 runners registered for the MRR.

“We are pleased that the number of participants in our race has returned to pre-Covid levels,” said Dr. Tris Carta, the President of the Manchester Road Race Committee.

Registration for the road race is closed and no further official registrations will be accepted. Race officials had discouraged poachers from being too cheap to pay an entry fee, as a large portion of the proceeds were donated to local charities.

The Manchester Road Race is one of America’s oldest and most popular Thanksgiving races, attracting Olympians as well as other world and national class runners as well as recreational joggers, many of whom wear creative costumes ranging from pilgrims to ballet dancers to Forest Gump himself.

If you feel like running, you can start at 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day. The race starts and finishes on Main Street in Manchester, in front of St. James Church. This year around 30,000 spectators are expected at the square. ECHN, Pratt & Whitney and Hoffman Lexus are the event’s primary sponsors.

A new distance

The circuit has shrunk for 2024.

Today’s distance of 4,748 miles was measured in 1986, today it is 4,737 miles.

The resurvey was necessary because of rehabilitation work along the racetrack over the years, as well as street and setback changes at the corner of Main and Charter Oak Streets when a large drugstore chain was built there several years ago to replace an auto dealer said race officials.

The first turning point

The famous first corner of the Manchester Road Race will have a different look this year.

As the massive herd of runners turns left from Main Street onto Charter Oak Street, participants will encounter flexible plastic fencing, road race committee members announced Thursday. The premise is to simulate the road width conditions that would exist if a permanent traffic circle were built at this location in the future.

The corner of Main and Charter Oak Streets is approximately a half mile from the road race start/finish line on Main Street in front of St. James Church. It’s the first cornering challenge that thousands of runners face when they take part in the road race, held every Thanksgiving morning on a 4,737-mile loop through central Manchester.

The flexible fencing will be maintained by road race volunteers and can be moved to safely accommodate the flow of runners from Main Street to Charter Oak Street. It will be positioned there before the start of the race on Thanksgiving morning and dismantled immediately after the last runner turns, event officials said.

This year’s honorary chairman, Manchester and Ireland running legend Mark Carroll, said the top runners are unlikely to be affected as they will secure an inside spot after the shot sounds.

“However, it could have an impact on recreational runners,” he said. “They will tend to be in the pack and some will be out.”

A four-peat?

Olympian Weini Kelati is aiming for her fourth straight victory in the Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving Day.

Kelati, 27, who lives in Flagstaff, AZ, has won the MRR Women’s Championship the last three years and holds the women’s course record of 22:55, which she set in her first appearance in Manchester in 2021.

Kelati’s other two winning attempts – 23:21 in last year’s event and 23:39 in 2022 – are also the second and third fastest times ever recorded on the course by a female competitor. In addition to winning the women’s title last Thanksgiving, Kelati also finished 19th overall. In her record run here in 2021, she finished 18th in the open class of the race.

A fourth win this year would give Kelati the MRR record for most consecutive wins by a woman and place her in very prestigious company. Olympic runner Amy Rudolph won the women’s race five times (1995, 1996, 1997, 2000 and 2002) and Olympian Judi St. Hilaire had four victories (1985, 1988, 1989 and 1992).

Thanksgiving in Manchester: 12,000 entries, 4,737 miles, possible 4-peat originally appeared on Manchester Patch