It can be healthy in the right dose, moderation and perspective.
Better than being an alcoholic, drug addict, addicted to porn, video games or Netflix and chill.

And while you can get the no-name long distance events, you get what you pay for.

I paid like $125 for a 100 mile tri last year. They had the bare minimum of everything and it was lackluster. I viewed it more for "supported training" than racing and I was spot on in what I expected.
If you want an experience, very few events will deliver that like an IM event.

There's a reason IM 70.3 Des Moines sold out in a few weeks, and it's not exactly a destination venue.

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Ryan
http://www.SetThePaceTriathlon.com
http://www.TriathlonTrainingDaddy.com
I got plans - https://www.trainingpeaks.com/...dotcom#trainingplans

Come on, that’s what TV and sponsors are for. The idea of a ‘pro tax’ on other participants sucks.

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)?

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.

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.

Don’t get me started on kids! Another no-go for me. No way, no how.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

"Hey I've never done an Ironman and I think they are stupid and people with enough money for IM to be disposable income are crazy. So here's my opinion on that thing I never did."

Cool thanks man. Way to contribute.

Do whatever you want. Nooooobody cares.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

If no one cared, no one would be responding. I don’t care what anyone else cares. The internet is for crazy people like me, not rational, logical people like you.

Mostly...I’m just failing to see how IM justifies $800+ for a full distance race. I’ve seen their product on the half distance, and it’s great, but I’m not sure if it was worth the 300-400 bucks.

As for my “is IM healthy” question, this comes from anecdotal evidence from friends and colleagues and the myriad of injuries they’ve sustained. I have a hunch it’s from improper training. One was a collegiate swimmer and went from never running or biking to training for an IM in a few months. Swam masters 5 mornings a week instead of gradually increasing the land-based-volume. Sounds like the consensus is that smart training leads to healthy management of the training needed to compete in IM.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

At least we agree on the last part. I've done 7 fulls, way more halves. My wife is up to 5. My dad is on 5 as well. My brother is at 3, and my other brother did one just to be part of the group.

Luckily we all have pretty healthy training habits, so zero injuries between us so far. We all also stick to 95% indoor bike training. If all our miles we're outside I have trouble thinking something bad wouldn't have happened by now...

And my wife and I are pretty active socially still. Really don't feel like we miss out on anything if we can make brunch by 2pm if we each knock out 6 hours on a Sat AM. So we're all pretty mentally healthy in that regard.

It's definitely possible to have this cake and eat it too in my opinion.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

I consider not being social a "pro" for training. I ride outside exclusively. It's too much fun, however I could get better results training indoors - I'm just not going to do it. One thing I've been doing recently that has helped my running and cycling is vert, as evident in my previous comments. Lots of steep hills, nordic track (30% treadmill walking) and step mill. I seem to be able to hold it together to do an hour or so of that...but for some reason, the indoor bike trainer is murder.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

Ironman holds several races that are AG only. They don't need Pros at this point.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

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.

I have no interest in funding pros. If their presence is self funding via advertising revenue, fine. If not, I don't feel any responsibility to fund a pro field. I don't see why do we need pros? That may not be a nice thought for the pros, but I think it's the reality for most racers.
The presence of a pro field or the prize fund available to them has zero bearing on my decision to enter a race. So why would I feel an exorbitant fee was justified by the prize money provided for pros?

Then maybe pros don't need to be paid as much as they get? If they can't draw an actual TV contract for WTC, then why the hell pay them? The average Joe IM bucket list guy doesn't give 2 craps about the pros, doesn't know a single pro's name, and couldn't spot one in and among the Faux Pro crowd during IM weekend.

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.

don't get me wrong. I would prefer ironman fees to be lower. If you sign up early you can get in for around $700. Still not cheap. But ironman events, IMO, are are very well organized and put on. I have far more ironman events within reasonable driving distance (say less than 10-12 hours) than I do non-ironman events. so if I need to fly or take an extra day off for work for travel for a non-ironman event then all of a sudden the cost starts evening out.

They do say 'don't knock it until you've tried it'!

In any case, I'm doing Ironman distance events less than annually now. Even if it's a cheaper non-branded event, I still take the training seriously, to the point where I don't want to train like that every summer! Next year I'm hoping to do a 100km Ultra along the Cotswold Way, and maybe a 600km Randonnee/Audax ride across Wales; not only are these way cheaper, they are also proper little adventures that I don't take competitively like an IM.

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29 years and counting

If triathlon bores you and you haven't done one in years... Then why are you on a triathlon forum?... Local races are a fraction of the price of big name branded events and it is great to support them.

And gets 50,000 entrants and another 100,000 who apply but don't get in.

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.

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

As a former road racer, I've done full week stage races that cost less, by a lot!

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.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

While I agree that swimming can get hugely monotonous I have never seen anything equating boredom with unhealthy. Are you venting or trying to make an argument here because I'm not following you?

Let us know what happens.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5