I do plenty of fun stuff on my own...but it's always different. No reason to stick only to Tri when I can do whatever I want!

I'm not even sure IM is good for most people's health (mental or physical), plus it's expensive. I've never done anything longer than a half, and haven't done an actual tri in a few years. My main holdup on that is entry fee. This guy paid $891 just for entry into IMPC. Crazy. I'll continue to do endurance sports so that I'm fit and can randomly do FUN and CHEAP events. Tri continues to be boring and expensive in the face of events like the Birkie, Red Bull 400, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/...jByf6T6rHwqkOSJJ%3A6

I'm not even sure IM is good for most people's health (mental or physical), plus it's expensive. I've never done anything longer than a half, and haven't done an actual tri in a few years. My main holdup on that is entry fee. This guy paid $891 just for entry into IMPC. Crazy. I'll continue to do endurance sports so that I'm fit and can randomly do FUN and CHEAP events. Tri continues to be boring and expensive in the face of events like the Birkie, Red Bull 400, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/...jByf6T6rHwqkOSJJ%3A6

As a young person about to do their first ironman (and truly addicted to the sport at this distance), what are the drains on life you guys are talking about?

While I agree IM is probably not healthy (on you body, mind, or relationships), finishing your first is a truly special life experience -- especially if you get lucky and have a good day (weather, nutrition, performance, etc.). You can say all you want about the power of Ironman's marking machine, etc. but there is a reason (having something to do with the experience itself, I surmise) that people eagerly tattoo a brand's logo onto their bodies.

Maybe consider raising money for charity (setting a high goal, maybe $5K?) and be open that you are going to use $1K of the proceeds to fund your entry fee?

I've never met someone who regretted doing the 1st Ironman. The Nth Ironman, is another story.... Just keep it in check and keep your real priorities front and center. It's easy to get sucked down the Ironman lifestyle rat hole, and the cost of that is more than financial.... but I wouldn't have it any other way.

For instance, training for the Red Bull 400, I got to do some shorter, higher intensity training. Hill repeats and the like. It was fun and I got in really good shape doing something I wouldn’t otherwise do, AKA intensity and vert!

As a young person about to do their first ironman (and truly addicted to the sport at this distance), what are the drains on life you guys are talking about?

I'm not even sure IM is good for most people's health (mental or physical), plus it's expensive. I've never done anything longer than a half, and haven't done an actual tri in a few years. My main holdup on that is entry fee. This guy paid $891 just for entry into IMPC. Crazy. I'll continue to do endurance sports so that I'm fit and can randomly do FUN and CHEAP events. Tri continues to be boring and expensive in the face of events like the Birkie, Red Bull 400, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/...jByf6T6rHwqkOSJJ%3A6

As a young person about to do their first ironman (and truly addicted to the sport at this distance), what are the drains on life you guys are talking about?

I feel like no one takes PROs into consideration when dealing with race fees. Local events have a small trophy or gift card for the winner while Ironman needs a decent prize purse. People love watching Sebi and Frodo fighting one Frankfurt and love seeing people out their body through hell to compete in Kona but they don’t realize that $750K prize purse has to come from somewhere.

In my experience triathlon is somewhat expensive first year versus what I’d likely be doing if I wasn’t doing triathlon.

Once you buy your gear other than race fees it costs almost nothing.

70 percent of my leisure time is cost free. Riding bike and running is free. Swimming costs about 10 USD per hour

IM race fees are a lot but not much more than I’d spend on a vacation day, sometimes less.

I would blow much more money on drinking and eating out and other crap if I wasn't doing triathlon.

Compare it to golf.

While I agree IM is probably not healthy (on you body, mind, or relationships), finishing your first is a truly special life experience -- especially if you get lucky and have a good day (weather, nutrition, performance, etc.). You can say all you want about the power of Ironman's marking machine, etc. but there is a reason (having something to do with the experience itself, I surmise) that people eagerly tattoo a brand's logo onto their bodies.

Maybe consider raising money for charity (setting a high goal, maybe $5K?) and be open that you are going to use $1K of the proceeds to fund your entry fee?

I've never met someone who regretted doing the 1st Ironman. The Nth Ironman, is another story.... Just keep it in check and keep your real priorities front and center. It's easy to get sucked down the Ironman lifestyle rat hole, and the cost of that is more than financial.... but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm not even sure IM is good for most people's health (mental or physical), plus it's expensive. I've never done anything longer than a half, and haven't done an actual tri in a few years. My main holdup on that is entry fee. This guy paid $891 just for entry into IMPC. Crazy. I'll continue to do endurance sports so that I'm fit and can randomly do FUN and CHEAP events. Tri continues to be boring and expensive in the face of events like the Birkie, Red Bull 400, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/...jByf6T6rHwqkOSJJ%3A6

I feel like no one takes PROs into consideration when dealing with race fees. Local events have a small trophy or gift card for the winner while Ironman needs a decent prize purse. People love watching Sebi and Frodo fighting one Frankfurt and love seeing people out their body through hell to compete in Kona but they don’t realize that $750K prize purse has to come from somewhere.

I think a few of the full distance branded events are offering payment plans.

I feel like no one takes PROs into consideration when dealing with race fees. Local events have a small trophy or gift card for the winner while Ironman needs a decent prize purse. People love watching Sebi and Frodo fighting one Frankfurt and love seeing people out their body through hell to compete in Kona but they don’t realize that $750K prize purse has to come from somewhere.

TV? Ironman is only seen on Facebook live and has zero little advertising on it and the only race that hits TV is Kona and the numbers aren’t big. As far as advertisements go, the cost of holding these races are huge and unlike marathons where you can get 10,000-40,000 runners, Ironman gets 3000 and has to close off substantially more real estate for a longer period of time. Considering the owners are not even close to being the wealthiest people in the country I have to believe there profit margins are nowhere near what we think.

It's insane to me that the events are so expensive that you need a payment plan for one

As outrageous as branded triathlon fees are, NYC marathon (albeit an anomaly and not representative of most marathons) is $300.

Mostly personal arguments. Just “vocalizing” to a crowd that might understand. Most of my friends are not long distance multi sport athletes. I think the unhealthiest part of IM/Tri training is the monotonous training. Part of it stems from swimming. I spent the better part of ten years with the same weekly routine 48 weeks of the year. I don’t want anything to do with that anymore.

My wife feels the same way. I told her I could pay for an Ironman event on a payment plan. Her facial expression helped me realize how asinine it sounds to pay that much for a race.

Do you see the correlation in these statements? If you are doing the same workouts week in and week out you are doing it wrong.

Mostly personal arguments. Just “vocalizing” to a crowd that might understand. Most of my friends are not long distance multi sport athletes. I think the unhealthiest part of IM/Tri training is the monotonous training. Part of it stems from swimming. I spent the better part of ten years with the same weekly routine 48 weeks of the year. I don’t want anything to do with that anymore.

The story of this thread is about this guy being completely wrong about how to do an Ironman, thinking he gets it, and criticizing the thing he doesn't understand based on incorrect assumptions.

I might as well log into a badminton forum and start complaining based on the fact that I played it in high school gym class.

I agree with this dude. I've been doing tris for about 8 years now and this is the first year where I probably won't get to do at least 1 triathlon. I did several Olympics and Sprints, about 25 70.3 races and 1 full Ironman. As I got older and had 2 kids, my time to train became less and less and I started to suck out there on the race course. I think I've just about run my course this time around, but I hope to get back into triathlon at a later date when life doesn't demand so much time and energy that I would have used for training. To fill the void, I'm sticking to just running and I've re-discovered my jazz saxophone chops from my college days....much easier to manage with 2 little ones at home where I am a heavily involved Dad. I miss tri, but I got to the point where I wasn't motivated to invest the time to properly train for my favorite distance (70.3). I definitely don't regret any of it and I'm really, really glad I did the single 140.6 on my resume as it was an incredible life experience! I've also been volunteering at races as a way to give back to the hobby and I've had just as much fun watching everyone else suffer when I don't have to.

I would blow much more money on drinking and eating out and other crap if I wasn't doing triathlon.

Compare it to golf.

Tri continues to be boring

There are a fair number of good threads here about this topic. Here is one I started some time ago, which has lots of useful advice. https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...over%20life#p6860726

Basically, racing Ironman competitively generally consumes something like 15-20 hrs week of training time, many additional hours on related activities which can add up in a hurry (researching gear/races/etc., maintaining bikes, "slowtwitching" as my wife calls it) and it's among the more expensive hobbies one could take up (cheaper than sailing and race car driving, but more expensive than running or pick-up basketball). As you get older, you will have more demands on your time and/or people who'd like to think it's their right to exercise control over your spending, which can lead to obvious problems.

But for now, enjoy the freedom young grasshopper!

Riding a bike is hardly free. You have to amortize that cost across all the house your spent on it. I ride a $4000 bike, so if I never have to do any sort of maintenance and only ride the bike I bought out of the box, it'll take 4000 hours to be $1 an hour. 400 hours for $10 an hour. So nearly a year of an hour a day to be $10 an hour. But then I'd go through some chains, cogs, the price to get it fit, anything that brakes, tubes, tires, head unit, power meter, etc. I've been tracking everything like that on my bike and all in after 16 months of ownership I'm at $19 an hour. That does not include clothing, which would be even more. Hardly free.

I also golf, and since you brought up that analogy let's play that out. My irons were 700, woods added another 600, putter was 200 and wedges were 200. Bag was 150. So that's 1850. That will last me about 10 years, though I have to regrip every year so add another 100 a year. So that's 2850, or 285 a year. I play about 50 rounds a year, and require 12 dozen balls so 500 a year there, and maybe another 100 a year for gloves. So we're taking 900 bucks a year for equipment. And each round costs me 50 bucks. So 2500 in rounds. That's $3400 for my total cost (again, clothing not counted) and I get ~200 hours of fun out of it. Or....$17 bucks an hour. Pretty close to biking.

But maybe I should exclude greens fees since you excluded race fees and just count my range expenses (ie, practice to practice)?

Riding a bike is hardly free. You have to amortize that cost across all the house your spent on it. I ride a $4000 bike, so if I never have to do any sort of maintenance and only ride the bike I bought out of the box, it'll take 4000 hours to be $1 an hour. 400 hours for $10 an hour. So nearly a year of an hour a day to be $10 an hour. But then I'd go through some chains, cogs, the price to get it fit, anything that brakes, tubes, tires, head unit, power meter, etc. I've been tracking everything like that on my bike and all in after 16 months of ownership I'm at $19 an hour. That does not include clothing, which would be even more. Hardly free.

I also golf, and since you brought up that analogy let's play that out. My irons were 700, woods added another 600, putter was 200 and wedges were 200. Bag was 150. So that's 1850. That will last me about 10 years, though I have to regrip every year so add another 100 a year. So that's 2850, or 285 a year. I play about 50 rounds a year, and require 12 dozen balls so 500 a year there, and maybe another 100 a year for gloves. So we're taking 900 bucks a year for equipment. And each round costs me 50 bucks. So 2500 in rounds. That's $3400 for my total cost (again, clothing not counted) and I get ~200 hours of fun out of it. Or....$17 bucks an hour. Pretty close to biking.

But maybe I should exclude greens fees since you excluded race fees and just count my range expenses (ie, practice to practice)?

Riding a bike is hardly free. You have to amortize that cost across all the house your spent on it. I ride a $4000 bike, so if I never have to do any sort of maintenance and only ride the bike I bought out of the box, it'll take 4000 hours to be $1 an hour. 400 hours for $10 an hour. So nearly a year of an hour a day to be $10 an hour. But then I'd go through some chains, cogs, the price to get it fit, anything that brakes, tubes, tires, head unit, power meter, etc. I've been tracking everything like that on my bike and all in after 16 months of ownership I'm at $19 an hour. That does not include clothing, which would be even more. Hardly free.

I also golf, and since you brought up that analogy let's play that out. My irons were 700, woods added another 600, putter was 200 and wedges were 200. Bag was 150. So that's 1850. That will last me about 10 years, though I have to regrip every year so add another 100 a year. So that's 2850, or 285 a year. I play about 50 rounds a year, and require 12 dozen balls so 500 a year there, and maybe another 100 a year for gloves. So we're taking 900 bucks a year for equipment. And each round costs me 50 bucks. So 2500 in rounds. That's $3400 for my total cost (again, clothing not counted) and I get ~200 hours of fun out of it. Or....$17 bucks an hour. Pretty close to biking.

But maybe I should exclude greens fees since you excluded race fees and just count my range expenses (ie, practice to practice)?

The cost was one of the factors that scared me off of triathlons. I'd lurk on slowtwitch and see threads on paying $300 to have someone tell you how high to put your seatpost, or which of your many $7000 bikes would you choose for a hilly course on an overcast day, and the like.

But then I literally ran into a triathlon last summer. During a long run, I went through the bike leg of a triathlon and the run leg ran an out-and-back on the same trail I was running and I encountered most of the field at some point. There were frumpy ladies on hybrid bikes and fat guys on WalMart bikes. I thought "I can do that".

Still there's a lot of sticker shock as I looked into triathlon: the bikes first of all, but also bike computers, and power meters, and indoor trainers, all of which I didn't know existed 3 months ago, and other stuff... Plus entry fees and travel to races. It does seem like triathletes spend A LOT of money.

I'm coming from the ultrarunning world where all you need is a $70 pair of shoes a couple times a year.

I'm actually surprised to see people balk at race fees. From an outsider's viewpoint, those entry fees seem small compared to everything else.

But I registered for the same sprint triathlon I ran into last summer. The entry fee was $60. I've paid more for ultras that frankly had very little infrastructure. I've also done ultras for free that had great support and lots of food.

Anyway, the entry point if you don't want to keep up with the Joneses isn't that high. I'll be riding my rusty 1977 touring bike and won't have a wetsuit or an official triathlon leotard thing or biking shoes. But neither will some others. Looking at the photos from last year's race, quite a few did have aero bikes and special triathlon stuff, but quite a few didn't.

Just being involved doesn't seem that expensive.

Likewise, the time commitment is whatever you make it. If you want to be competitive, it'll take a lot of time, but so does just about any other sport.

I ride MTB primarily now (Utah). Though I spend plenty of time falling off of it and hurting myself.

As to the poster who asked about training - focusing on a goal can end up shoehorning you into a certain type of training. The hill repeat I was doing for RB400 were max effort - HR up around 190 type of thing. A few times a week.

Point is...my imagination needs a kick in the pants sometimes! That’s where my original post comes from I suppose.

I'm not even sure IM is good for most people's health (mental or physical), plus it's expensive. I've never done anything longer than a half, and haven't done an actual tri in a few years. My main holdup on that is entry fee. This guy paid $891 just for entry into IMPC. Crazy. I'll continue to do endurance sports so that I'm fit and can randomly do FUN and CHEAP events. Tri continues to be boring and expensive in the face of events like the Birkie, Red Bull 400, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/...jByf6T6rHwqkOSJJ%3A6

And big events cost big money. I don’t think anyone is getting rich overnight. Staff, insurance, medical support, etc. You get what you pay for.