Is Running turning into an Expensive Sport ?

It depends...

If you’re a Pro it’s not expensive because you get product from a sponsor and race entry covered.

If your a high school runner it’s not expensive because there’s no entry fee for races and you get borrowed apparel. Your cost is just shoes and you’re likely not running insane mileage so they last longer anyway. Along with running stores give you a discount for being a high school runner.

If you’re a college runner it’s still inexpensive because you can get all the high school runner gets. Plus sometimes even shoes covered.

The only way it’s expensive is if you run a ton of mileage, run big expensive races often, and have to have the pricey gear. So basically if you’re an obsessed hobby jogger.

Run in cheap footwear or barefoot. Get apparel from Walmart or goodwill. Run free events or time trial yourself. You’ll never spend more than a 100 dollars a year to run then. And unless you’re a pro or student-athlete it doesn’t matter how fast you’re anyway. Just run for fun.

Federal. 29 states are higher, some double.

eeesss wrote:

Ask anyone with kids if running is an expensive sport. Think running shoes cost a lot? How about $500+ baseball bats? Standard hockey and football equipment runs into the thousands. Vaporfly aside, running shoes cost $100-$150 bucks.

If you want to spend thousands to run the Boston Marathon, it's there. But there are also tons of marathons you can run for less than $100. And, with every charity under the sun having it's own 5K now, you can pretty much train and race anywhere in the country. Travel costs are totally unnecessary in most of the country if you want to run a race.

Nice try.

Agreed 100% - in contrast to every other sport, running and racing is by far the cheapest sport outside of a local pick up game of basketball or soccer

It’s expensive if you do a lot of races.

You should try cycling. I spent $13,000 last year.

It's the American way to make things that don't have to be expensive cost a fortune. What's all that "disposable" income for anyway?

Yes

Think you yanks have it hard. Over here in the UK I'm running for peanuts. Most shoes can be had on sale for about $65, my London marathon entry was $48, can find a marathon within 2hrs drive from my house for about $50 every week if I want. Half marathons can be entered for less than $30, 10k's about $20.

If a shoe is developed that allows those with lower leg pain (knee, ankle, plantar, etc) to run pain free, then it would be well worth $1000.

It's not like it's skiiing or some other useless winter sport.

I used to spend $1,000 to $1,500 on running gear, travel, registration et al until I started traveling to national and regional masters championships and I joined multiple fitness centers to augment my training. Now, it's closer to $3,000- $4,000/year.

That said, running is a very inexpensive sport compared to virtually all other sports.

IDK a pair of $250 racing flats once a year seems pretty minimal compared to the cost of a lot of other things people spend on running, especially the demographic most concerned with buying vaporflys.

These include:

-- Races, particularly ones that involve travel. Particularly big marathons like Boston, New York and Chicago. 200-300 dollar entry fee, a flight, a couple days hotel, that certainly adds up. Outside of the occasional out of town race for a marathon or a half, I mostly race locally which is comped by my race team, but if I didn't that would be $30-40 dollars a race even locally.

--A running coach. While certainly not necessary, 90% of the age group competitive and better runners I know work with a coach or have at some point. Hell, I work with a coach. I like my coach, but I pay him $150 dollars a month. I used to coach myself and improved for a while, but it's hard to be objective about yourself and I definitely get value from a coach. And I can afford it, so I have a coach. That adds to the expensiveness of the sport though.

--Trainers. I run 2500-3000 miles per year and get ~400-500 miles out of a pair of shoes, which I think is pretty typical (I know some people will claim to get 1000 miles out of a pair of shoes, but a lot of my running friends think you need to replace after 300). Some people run a lot more than I do. That's 5-8 pairs of shoes a year. You can get cheap ones on sale and I usually buy last year's model, but even so that's maybe 500-800 dollars a year in trainers.

--Physical therapy/sports medicine/whatever. Everyone gets injured and goes to the PT eventually. Sometimes people get extra blood tests that aren't covered by insurance to ensure their ferritin isn't off or whatever. Some people go get sports massages or go to the chiro to deal with a weird niggle or get dry needling. Some people use inside tracker. Anyway, additional costs for care from the PT is a pretty routine and typical expense for anyone who trains at any kind of semi-high level.

--Consulting with a sports registered dietician. I know of several runners who have felt the need to dial in their nutrition.

--Strength coaches, particularly coming back from injury. A lot of runners I know have done this.

--Recovery stuff, like cryotherapy or normatech boots. Not necessary, but more common than I would anticipate given how expensive all that stuff is.

--Fancy GPS watches, a ridiculous amount of athletic clothes, and so on and so forth.

Still cheaper than cycling, skiing, triathlon, or any number of other sports, but still a lot of ways you can sink money into running, even when doing it recreationally that all seem to add up to a whole lot more than buying shoes that are 150 dollars more expensive than typical racing flats.

Used to get 400 miles out of a pair of shoes 20 years ago, now it's more like 200 and the prices are higher. And the VaporFlys I hear they get even fewer miles and cost more where if you get 100 miles, that's like $2, $2.50 a mile? Sheesh. Reminds me of bowling, where the newest/latest/expensive ball tends to "track out" faster. What happened to durability? I'd pay a slightly higher price for that but I haven't found a shoe/brand where that works for me.

random person # wrote:

IDK a pair of $250 racing flats once a year seems pretty minimal compared to the cost of a lot of other things people spend on running, especially the demographic most concerned with buying vaporflys.

These include:

--A running coach. While certainly not necessary, 90% of the age group competitive and better runners I know work with a coach or have at some point. Hell, I work with a coach. I like my coach, but I pay him $150 dollars a month. I used to coach myself and improved for a while, but it's hard to be objective about yourself and I definitely get value from a coach. And I can afford it, so I have a coach. That adds to the expensiveness of the sport though.

If you're paying an online coach $150 a month you're being had. I completely agree that coaches are probably the best thing to invest money in after the absolute essentials are covered, but a half decent coach in person is likely to be better than a top drawer coach online... and you're probably not getting a top drawer coach online either because they're busy actually coaching in person! He's retired now but the last professional UK coach I spoke to about his rates charged the equivalent of around $90 a month - he was considered expensive and there were multiple senior international athletes in that group, so $150 for someone on the end of an email address is horrible value. Similarly, I know of a hell of a lot of international level coaches working on a voluntary basis.

runlikehell64 wrote:

Federal. 29 states are higher, some double.

I wasn't going to list every state individually.

I Chose D2 wrote:

You should try cycling. I spent $13,000 last year.

Check out big baller brad the cyclist over here.

Yes, a sport dominated by East Africans is expensive.

They're asking for $115 weeks ahead of a big local half marathon now. Let races like that die.

For the average local kid? For the very few that are talented, yes, but that's every sport. Hell even wrestling has turned into a rich kids game. If we're talking about the elite athletes. Same with baseball and soccer. You travel all over the country paying for tournaments. Maybe not so much in football since travel football isn't a big thing yet but it still goes on.