Why is CIM so expensive now?

Inflation everywhere. I am sure labor cost alone has skyrocketed in CA.

Supply and demand. People are still coughing up the money.

I’m guessing the organizers meeting went this way. They plotted two charts, one showing “How Much Money We Are Making” and another showing “How Much Money We Would Like To Make”. The second one was much larger. So in order to fix this discrepancy, they raised prices.

I'm hopeful that this is starting to change. Boston has failed to sell out two consecutive years after having a cutoff time for ten straight years. Anywhere from 2,000 to 9,000 qualified runners were left out. If Boston is failing to sell out, other races are certainly seeing a drop off in numbers. Maybe people are getting sick of the cost and just don't think completing a marathon is worth it anymore.

OP, I've seen this at many races. Half marathons charging $110-150 are no longer unheard of. The "cheap" regional ones many times are 90-110 then the 6-10 dollar "processing fees" for registering. In my experience, race prices really jumped past the rate of inflation. So much so that I will not even bother to race that often anymore. However, so many people simply pay it and run $60 5Ks.

CIM is historically known to be a fast course. It’s where I set my PR back in 2009. I don’t recall how much I paid, but I bet it was $100-$130.

I think a lot of runners are willing to spend an extra $50-100 to run a fast course. Especially if you’re flying in for the marathon, the race fees are the cheapest part of the weekend.

I agree that paying $60 for a local 5K is pointless. I rarely race less than 1/2 marathon.

I can't speak for CIM, but I can speak for myself - we put on a couple of open water swim events. When we started ~13 years ago, we would clear 3-4K, which we split with the timing company. Not getting rich but worth the time and effort to put on. This past weekend, we cleared $800. That's horrible and not sustainable unless everyone is okay with basically donating their time. We've raised prices a bit, but who's going to pay $50+ to swim 1 mile? Here's where some of the money has gone over the past 2 years:

Port-o-potties doubled in price

T-shirts increase $3 per t-shirt (and people love the t-shirts)

Insurance for 3 swims was $800, now insurance for 2 swims is $1,400

Park fees & parking have increased

We try to go pretty cheap for awards and get volunteers to help on the water and registration. We have a pretty good post race spread but nothing extravagant. Our number of participants is steady (~200, which we have to cap based on parking at the park).

Bottom line, I don't know how little races can remain sustainable in the coming years unless people want to pony up more money. The big races can probably get away with it better.

How much were eggs in 2019?

More free meetups. More Park Runs.

What I mean to say, is that in lieu of participating in these outrageously expensive events, we could instead see a movement toward more free meetups and Park Runs.

It is the pr course. NY is hilly. Chicago is early October, not ideal if you're training through a hot summer. Where else are you going to run fast? The price will unfortunately go up until they no longer make money. I don't think there is even another kind of big marathon in Northern California in the fall.

I think that's a big part of it. I just ran Boston, can't remember what the race fee was, but I damn well remember how much the hotel was per night.

You can say this about every single product in the world post-COVID. Companies realized they can slash half the features of their products and people will not only still pay, but will pay more than they used to. I think people just got restless during lockdowns and once those went away we all clamored to get out of the house and do something and didn't care what the cost was, and now those high costs have just become the norm because who would lower the prices of anything if people are still paying them?

Security costs probably a factor at Boston, don’t you think?

For some people, it is an international experience. It is the California International Marathon after all.

Most races, including boston, are in a covid hangover. You also purposely didn’t mention the stronger qualifying time and the race is SIGNIFICANTLY faster in the first two corrals. Both qualifying and race time. How many runners would have been left out if qualifying was at 2019 standards?

This is the price to pay for all the sub elites who are waiting til the last minute to qualify

I don’t think parkrun has USATF certified marathons. The last parkrun i ran didnt even have a bathroom nearby. There was a designated tree

I ran a half marathon this fall that was $160 (!!!!) and had a beer garden afterwards. who wants to go to a beer garden at 8:30 am after running your balls off for like 90 minutes?

we need more races that are just some guy with a timex, a bike, and a fistful of numbered popsicle sticks to give to runners at the end of the race. correlate popsicle stick number with lap time order at the finish, and bob's your auntie. of course, this doesn't work for huge races, but there's a local outfit that charges $40 for a 5k on a bike path. a bike path that I run on at least 3 days a week for free! races are so expensive that I mostly don't do em anymore.