2014 Plan - Minnesota Marathons - Cost Analysis

I wanted to follow-up the my previous post on running all of the Minnesota Marathons with my cost breakdown analysis for doing the events. The first expense is the cost of the races.

DATE:	NAME:	Cost	Sign-up Dates
01/12/14	Zoom! Yah! Yah! Indoor MarathonZoom!	$75.00	By 8/31
04/26/14	Brainerd Jaycees Run for the Lakes	$55.00	By 12/31
		$65.00	By 2/28
		$75.00	After 3/1
05/10/14	Lake Wobegon Trail Marathon	$55.00	By 12/31
		$70.00	By 3/31
		$85.00	After 3/31
05/25/14	Med-City Marathon	$55.00	By 10/20
		$65.00	By 12/31
		$70.00	By 2/28
		$75.00	By 4/15
		$80.00	After 4/15
06/01/14	Minneapolis Marathon	$79.99	No date?
06/21/14	Grandmas Marathon	$90.00	By 1/31
		$95.00	By 3/31
		$110.00	By 5/31
07/12/14	Eugene Curnow Trail Marathon	$25.00	By 6/1
		$35.00	By 7/1
		$45.00	After 7/1
09/06/14	Moose Mountain Marathon	$75.00	Registration opens 3/15th
09/20/14	Walker/North Country Races	$60.00	By 4/1
		$65.00	By 9/1
		$70.00	After 9/1
10/05/14	Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon	$105.00	Registration opens 2/1st
10/11/14	Bemidji Blue Ox Marathon	$70.00	By 5/1
		$80.00	By 7/1
		$90.00	After 7/1
10/19/14	Mankato Marathon	$40.00	Between 1/1 and 1/10
		$60.00	By 3/31
		$65.00	By 6/30
		$80.00	By 8/31
		$85.00	After 9/1

Turns out the cost for early sign-up would be approximately $795, I say approximately as I am guesstimating on a few of the races. If I signed up by the second entry cutoff period it would add another $80 and if I wait until the last entry it would add an additional $180 over early entry.

	Early	Second	Last
Cost	$794.99	$874.99	$974.99
Delta Cost		-$80.00	-$180.00

So signing up early would get me 3 marathons for free,more or less.

The other costs associated with the races would be hotel or camping and travel expenses. For the hotel costs, I used $100/night with 3 of 6 events requiring us to stay for 2 nights. For camping, I assumed we would camp 2 nights for all 6 events at a cost of $25/night. For travel, I assumed 25 mpg at $3.50/gallon.

Gas	Hotel	Camping
$420.00	$900.00	$300.00

So the cost to run all of the marathons with gas and either camping or staying in a hotel would be between $1515 and $2295. Which works out to $126 to $191 per event. 

For some folks this would seem like a lot of money to spend on running events and it might be but speaking for myself, I don't hunt, fish snowmobile, nor do we have a cabin so in many ways it isn't too expensive a hobby, all things considered.