The biggest US running day of the year is coming up! In 2023, Thanksgiving Day races broke RunSignup records, with 920,761 participants across 833 races. Now, with about a month until Thanksgiving 2024, we took a look at the numbers to see how this year is shaping up.
All data is as of 10/24/2024.
How Many Turkey Trots Will There Be This Year?
So far, we have 842 Thanksgiving Day races on RunSignup with at least one registration. That already exceeds the number of Thanksgiving Day races we saw in 2023, when 833 races were run. To date, 304,008 runners have registered for a Thanksgiving run, an average of 365 participants per race. Of the 842 races currently up, 67 already exceed 1,000 participants and 4 have more than 5,000 partiticipants committed.
Where are Turkey Trots Being Held?
Turkey Trots are scheduled in all 50 states, with 10 states hosting 30 or more races on Thanksgiving Day. These states include: Florida (53 races), Pennsylvania (53 races), Ohio (51 races), Texas (46 races), California (44 races), North Carolina (42 races), New York (42 races), Virginia (35 races), Indiana (34 races), and New Jersey (30 races).
How Do Your Turkey Trot Registrations Compare to Previous Years?
The real question for race directors is simple: how do registrations for your race compare to this time last year. Take a look at your YoY stats on your race dashboard to get an idea how your race compares to previous years.
Turkey Trot Race Churn
Another question we wanted to answer was: how much race churn is there? In other words, how many Thanksgiving Day races are not recurring. Additionally, we look at competitor churn to understand how many of our races move to a different provider each year. Because this must be checked manually and small races are most likely to open registration very late, this report only looks at races with more than 300 runners in 2023.
In addition to No Race churn and Competitor churn, there were a few races of unknown status. These races have not definitively announced they are not returning, but do not currently have registration open. While it’s likely that some of races with unknown status will not come back, it is not unheard of for a Turkey Trot to open registration in November.
Even if we assume that none of the races of unknown status are returning in 2024, the race churn for Thanksgiving runs is only 2.1%. This is a much lower churn than we see for all races throughout the year (typically 5-6%), further highlighting how solid the Thanksgiving run tradition is. Competitor churn also remains low, with just two 2023 races moving to another registration platform in 2024.
What’s Next?
All-in-all, it’s shaping up to be another exciting, record-breaking Thanksgiving Day. Getting ready for your race day and want to make sure you’ve crossed every T? Join us for one of our two upcoming Turkey Trot Prep webinars (one for timers and one for race directors).