Friday, January 8, 2010

Cost of racing

I haven’t quite finished looking back at 2009. I almost enjoy looking over stats as much as I enjoy going out and accumulating stats.


Looking at my racing in 2009 I’ve come up with:
46 races over 263.55 miles
I competed against 15,554 people with the average field being 338 finishers
My average finish place was 17.4 or the top 5.14% of the field

Below are my bests at various distances and what they “equal” when age graded

Dist
Time
%
Graded
3.11
16:30
84.00%
15:19
5
28:49
79.90%
26:42
6.22
35:17
81.90%
32:56
7.45
41:45
83.70%
39:02
9.33
56:34
78.20%
52:59
10
59:56
79.50%
56:11
13.11
1:17:11
82.10%
1:12:35
26.22
2:59:41
74.30%
2:50:41

The big surprise is that my 5k is my top performance of the year. I think the percentages are a bit skewed as more people compete at 5k which might help “up” my value at that distance. Personally I thought my 12k was my best run of the year. The worst performance among my bests would be the marathon. That wouldn’t be a surprise as I didn’t train to run a marathon.


Overall places
Top 10 – 33 times or 72% of races
Top 5 – 24 times or 52% of races

Master place
The only times I did not finish in the top five in the 40+ were the seven USATF New England road championships (Grand Prix). I was top master 23 times (50%).
Place #
1- 23
2- 6
3- 6
4- 3
5- 1
Total top 5 =39

Race Expenses
It really is expensive to race! I spent over $800 on entry fees and $1,500 for flights and hotels, but by far the biggest expense is the actual drive. I used the “business use” amount per mile ($.55) and only counted that if I actually drove (I did so in 36 of the 46 races).


Income
Entry
Drive
Drive Exp
Other exp
Total
$90.00
$807.88
6355
$2,549.25
$1,580.00
Avg
 $    1.96
 $17.56
138.15
 $      55.42
 $   34.35







Total
Avg



Expenses
$5,027.13
$109.29




I think the averages are the most interesting thing. I drove an average of 138 miles and spent over $17 per race on entry fees and won less than $2 per race.


The one thing I didn’t include in this is the cost of training to prepare to race. The biggest expense for that would have to be medical and it would easily double the total cost of racing.

3 comments:

Derrick said...

fun to read all the stats, but very scary seeing the $'s put into racing. I didn't race anywhere near as much as you, but I really don't want to know this amount for myself. Yikes.

SJ said...

That's $3/mile to race! Which on average sounds pretty good, looking at the cost of some local races <5miles.

s p running said...

since most races have a charity, are we correct to itemize those on tax return Schedule A "Gifts to Charity" -- or will the IRS chase us down?
;-)