So my wife is taking the plunge and joining me in the world of Ironman. She picked IMKY for her first one, for the swim, and it’s also not too far from Chicago. It’s an incredible ride in life to take these journeys with her, but now that she picked our 2015 race, I’m looking to pick our 2016 race. I really would like to do a European race. I did Mont-Tremblant this summer, and it showed me that I’m wrong to feel anxiety about a destination race. So with that understanding, the only real thing I’m thinking that I need to worry about is expenses. Can anyone give me some basic cost ideas/guidelines for me to consider so that when the time comes, I can present a full disclosure to my wife to sell her on Switzerland, Sweden or maybe Challenge Roth? I don’t think it’ll be a tough sell as far as race venue, but she’s far more realistic and practical then I am, so she’ll be the one to gauge the expense side of things.
We did IM Switzerland in 08 and IM 70.3 Luxembourg this summer. Both times we have booked apartments to stay in. Last summer we used AirBnB and stayed in an amazing apartment in Luxembourg City. We like the idea of having a kitchen so we don’t need to go out for all meals. Including flights, accommodations, rental car, food and spending money we spent around $8k total. We did spend a total of 3 weeks in Europe so could have done it cheaper if we stayed a shorter time and that the Euro wasn’t worth 1.5 times what the CDN dollar was but for 2 we thought it was pretty reasonable. We did travel to Italy for a week and then back to France for a week.
Switzerland was probably around $7k for 2 weeks.
Hope this helps.
So would $4000 be about right for say, 8 days? Including airfare, hotel, food and incidentals? Of course we’d probably need another $1000 for finisher gear…
I would think but you would need to manage your spending. Keep an eye out to book flights early as you might get some good deals when they put on seat sales. I would also look at AirBnB or similar sites to book accommodations, it will save you money.
Make sure you watch the exchange rate because you may think you are spending less than you think.