The hysteria hit at a minute past midnight. Thousands of avid runners had stayed up well past their bedtimes Thursday night and into Friday morning to catch the start of registration for January's Houston Marathon, which had been aggressively advertised as 12:01 a.m. sharp. That's exactly when the sign-up site crashed, as anxious marathoners scrambled to fill the 22,000 spots. Their concern, it turns out, was justified.
Registration has proceeded at a leisurely pace in the past -- last year, i
