Can you make a decent living running road races?

Define "mid tier", how fast are you exactly? But if you had to ask probably not because even decent elites are struggling to make ends nowadays, prize money has really dried up

Generally no. If combined with selling for intercourse maybe

Might as well kill 2 birds with one stone and dress up as a female while identifying as one at the races.

Can you run sub 2:03 in a marathon?

For a 5k road race, if prize money is $, then winning time is X. Completely guessing here.

$0 - 20:00

$50 - 16:00

$100 - 15:30

$250 - 14:45

$1000 - 13:45

I second this. I left college as an 8 time D-I All American. PR's well below 29:00 and 14:00 and decided to hit the roads. The money wasn't what it was in the 80's, but it was sure more plentiful than it is today. My most successful year was about $34k in cash winnings, plus some other prices that had value, i,.e. plane tickets, hotel vouchers, massage gift certs, etc.

Please know there was a lot of cherry picking involved and sometimes(many times) 2 races per weekend that involved picking up a check for $500-1000 at a "bigger" race and then driving to an easy pick for another $500 at some small town race. It paid the bills, but I was racing well over 30 times a year. It made peaking for things like Nationals pretty difficult.

This was the only way to stay semi-pro at the time. The sponsorship money had really dried up except for the very best and everything was bonuses and "reimbursements" if you placed high enough at road or track races.

Not sure if you could make it work today. My college town was VERY inexpensive, my roommate and I paid 295.00 a month for a brand new apartment, food was way cheaper, utilities felt non-existent compared to today.

Good Luck. Oh, and I'm not sure if they still make it, but we used the Road Race Management Guide, that you had to buy, which listed all the big money races, and back in the day there was a site/link at Apple Raceberry Jam that listed a lot of smaller, independent money races that were up for cherry picking if you were willing to travel on your own dime.

Look into trail races. That is your best shot. I did some last year where the podium all got cash. $300 for first place and a few post race meal. Subtract entry fee and you are netting about $200. Not too shabby! Much harder to win money on the roads.

Did you even read what the D1 AA said about trying to do the road races and what you said. According to you, $200 X ???=$??? from trail races MINUS travel, food, lodging, etc.

Take a look a the past winning times of the race below, estimate your haul and decide whether or not it's worth it to travel and race 2-3 of these mid-tier events a month. I'll guess that it is not.

medcenterhealth.org

Awards & Prizes

Top 5 Male & Female Overall Finishers 1st Place - $500 2nd Place - $400 3rd Place - $300 4th Place - $200 5th Place - $100 Sponsored by: Sponsorship available Top 4 Male & Female FinishersMasters (40 - 49) Division 1st Place...

Link:medcenterhealth.org/med-center-health-...

You can win some mid-tier half marathons in sub 1:05 and earn $1000-$2500 per race. You can earn $1000-$4000 in a mid-tier full running 2:15-2:20. If you win two half marathons and a full in a cycle, that’s $3000-$9000. Good side hustle money, but you can’t live off that. Need another job for sure.

Sure he’s a marathoner and races like twice a year… but If a sponsored athlete like Reed Fischer (or Droddy too I guess) works a part time job, then odds are low anyone can make a steady living off race purses.

If he did that every weekend, and he couldn't, he would earn about $10K annually which is not a decent living.

Note that 1st and 2nd men ran 31:50 and 34 respectively last year and 1st woman 38 minutes, plus she was a masters runner so if they allow double dipping she’d get $900 for the effort. A male runner with 29 min +/- 10K ability could probably run a dozen 5K/10K races, a couple of half marathons in 1:04 or 1:05 and 2:15-17 marathons and pull in maybe 15-20K a year in prize money. Maybe get some travel expenses paid.

Would need to work part time and have roommates and such. But it could work for a couple of years.

Road whoring just isn’t lucrative. Even for those prepared to live the dirtbag lifestyle.

Europe and us no.

Elsewhere yes. Not just because people are slower there, but because cost of living is less, there are more events, cheaper entry fees, travel is cheap and the prize money is better.

I can't imagine why anyone would try to live off $15-20K per year as a road racer without getting at least some menial job to have something to fall back on in case of injury, etc.

Apparently it's much harder to make any sort of living as a runner now than it was in my day. I was hardly even sub-elite, but in 1992 I won $2,000 for finishing 8th in a marathon in 2:51. That's over $4,000 in today's dollars. Women's marathoning wasn't nearly as fast then as it is now, but even then 2:51 wasn't too impressive. Sometimes you get lucky.

Sad fact is unless you’re really good you have to be attractive to the brands for marketing. You can’t make it as a decent runner.

Probably not, unless you are good enough to get on TV consistently. Maybe you could scrape by, but I can't imagine that's a fun way to live.

I think your best bet isn't necessarily to race every weekend and try to pick up $250-$1000 and just barely come out ahead. It's to race 10-15 total times a year, with 2-4 lower-tier marathons where you could pick up $2,000-$5,000 as your goal races, plus 6-10 mid-major (or smaller) shorter-than-marathon races. In addition to that, sure, race as many local (no overnight required) races you can win or podium in and pick up $250+ for a workout effort as you can find. Being able to either work part-time remotely, or have a very flexible job (yes, like working in a shoe store that supports you in your endeavor) will help allow you to do this--as will finding 2-3 clustered races in consecutive weekends where you can crash with folks you know. Lastly, being personable and professional with the RDs, committee members, and elite coordinators you deal with will go a long way towards making this viable for more than 1-2 seasons (a nice "thank you" email goes a long way towards being invited back next year).

Marathons to consider are ones like Austin, Tobacco Road, Lincoln, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Vancouver, Vermont City, Grandma's, Quad Cities, Twin Cities, Des Moines, Hartford, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia.

Non-marathons to consider are the half marathons or other shorter distance races associated with many of the marathons listed above as well as the All-American City 10k, Crescent City Classic 10k, Carlsbad 5000, SACTOWN 10 Mile, Cooper River Bridge Run 10k, Monument Ave 10k, Bloomsday 12k, River Bank Run 25k, Chicago 13.1, Wharf to Wharf, Utica Boilermaker 15k, Bix 7, the Crim 10 Mile, Cow Harbor 10k, Dana Point Turkey Trot or Manchester Road Race.

Good luck. If you can clear $20k it'll be a good year financially, but I can think of a lot of worse ways to spend 2-4 years in your early-to-mid 20s!