Race Director Brant Kotch

With a cap of 15,000 runners, the Chevron Houston Marathon and Aramco Houston Half Marathon sold out the last week of November, leaving a lot of runners without a race to run after having trained for months.

"We broke a lot of records this year," race director Brant Kotch said. "Lots of people didn't get in that wanted to run. We'll have more than 20,000 runners in the four events."

Prize money will also went up to a total of $218,000, $138,000 in the full and $80,000 in the half, which is host to the USA Men's championship for the third consecutive year. This year will be the first time for Houston to host the USA Women's Half Marathon championship.

"We are looking forward to some good races, with the USA championships in the half and a group of developmental athletes trying to qualify for the Olympic trials in the full," Kotch said. "Greg McMillan is training the group and will have 68 athletes here trying to get the qualifying times."

The race is not just about the athletes, it also raises money for charities.

"Our goal is to raise $1 million for charities and we're trying to get corporate contributions through the selling of portions of the course to sponsors," Kotch said.

The races will see a change in the start lines, due to work on a new downtown park, with both moving north a few blocks closer to Minute Maid Park.