The RAMROD lottery will open on March 1 and will end on March 31.
The registration process changed in 2009. Prior to that, registrants paid the full registration fee and waited to see if they were selected in the lottery. If they were not selected, they could request an immediate refund or be put on the wait list and get a refund if they were not selected or later chose not to ride. Now, everyone pays a non-refundable registration fee of $5 for singles or $10 for tandems and pays the balance only when they are selected to ride–either through the lottery or from the wait list.
The question that seems to come up most often is “What is my chance of being selected?”. The last couple of years, total registrants has been around 1,300 which meant that statistically, your chances werea little better than 50% even considering that about 100 spots go to the previous year’s volunteers. I participated in the lottery only once, in 2005, and was selected. A friend of mine has ridden twice and both times got in from the wait list. Last year, six friends of mine rode. Three were selected in the initial lottery and three got in from the wait list (one got in in mid-June).
The second most frequent question is why some people seem to get selected more than once while others have entered for years without getting in. I can only tell you it is the luck of the draw. The lottery is conducted by a computer at active.com and uses only the current year’s lottery entrants. There is no record in their system of previous year’s entrants. If you want to guarantee yourself a spot in RAMROD, work as a volunteer and earn a lottery bypass for the next year.
Once the lottery has been completed on April 2nd, all registrants will be notified of their selection status. If you are not selected, you will be able to visit the active.com site to see your position on the wait list. If you are willing to train as though you will be selected, your odds of getting in from the wait list are fairly good. In 2007, most got in, 2008 nearly half did and in 2009, of the nearly 1,600 entrants over 1,200 received an invitation to complete their registration. Many, however, were given the opportunity at the very last minute.
One of the most important things I can tell people is to be sure they use an email address that will receive lottery results information. In 2009, every gmail, msn, hotmail, yahoo and boeing address apparently filtered out our initial emails. Whether they did not like the word RAMROD, did not like embedded links, or did not like messages going to several accounts simultaneously I could not tell you. I only know that I heard from hundreds of people who did not receive the initial message with their lottery status. No messages bounced back and we had no way of knowing who did not receive them until we began getting emails from people questioning why they had not heard anything.
The lottery opens just after midnight on March 1st. Good luck and keep the rubber side down.