Broad Street Run growing, along with a younger Center City population

Fifteen minutes after the Broad Street Run online registration opened Wednesday morning, the website was gasping for air.

"It's been nuts," James Marino, director of the race, said at lunchtime. By noon, 13,000 runners had persevered, repeatedly refreshing their computer screens until they got through and signed up.

By 3 p.m., it was all over.

An apology appeared on the home page: "Registration for the Blue Cross Broad Street Run has exceeded our wildest expectations with over 30,000 runners registering in a record five hours."

The run, sponsored by Independence Blue Cross and the Philadelphia Daily News, among others, was started in 1980 by the Department of Parks and Recreation, which continues to run the event. That year, 1,500 runners completed the race, which raises money for the American Cancer Society.

Last year, registration reached capacity in four days, and 25,000 made it across the finish line.

The event's popularity has taken off in part because the city's population of young and fit college students and graduates has increased.

Recent census data show that 393,000 young adults, ages 20 to 34, now make up a full 26 percent of the overall city population. That's an increase of more than 50,000 people in the last decade.

"That's definitely our demographic," said Marino.

Last February, an article in Forbes about the top magnet cities for the college-educated crowned the Philadelphia region as No. 1 among Northeast urban centers of more than five million people.

"I've always thought Philadelphia's ace in the hole is its authenticity, its lack of pretension," said David Thornburgh, director of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the mid-2000s, Thornburgh served as director of the Pennsylvania Economy League, which produced a study showing that the Philadelphia region was losing this critical element of the population and failing to retain the large numbers of students enrolled in colleges and universities here.

The Broad Street Run is just one measure of an apparent reversal in that trend, particularly in Center City.

Tuesday evening at 6, nearly 200 people, most in their mid-20s and early 30s, jammed into Philadelphia Runner, a small shop at 16th and Sansom Streets that sells running gear.

It was the store's second annual singles Valentine's Day run, a three-mile post-work loop for unattached men and women, ending in free drinks at a local bar, Ladder 15.