I woke up this morning ready to fill the tires on my bike to capacity, fill up the water bottles and head out for a group ride with my race club. I had to overcome a lot of fear and lack of confidence to even think of doing the ride because I am, without question, the slowest person out there. Having me along would put a crimp in someone’s day but I was going for it, anyhow under the assumption that some supportive, nice person wouldn’t mind getting in an easy ride day. The route for today’s ride was one of my favorites – the wild Turkey ride.

Then I woke up with ‘the neck thing’. ‘The neck thing’ is a soreness in my left trapezoid that keeps me from turning my head. The first time it happened I pushed it and ended up in so much pain I fully understood how people in chronic pain commit suicide. It hurt that much. I don’t push it anymore. No head turning = no ride *sniff sniff*. I have to use my damned trainer on a perfectly nice day.

So – use trainer = procrastinate. My personal post wasn’t going well so I read blogs including a post by Sweet Baboo that ended with some pondering on the now canceled Woodlands 101 event for which he was registered. It was just a hop, skip and a jump to noodling around on the 101 site (which you can do since they haven’t taken down any of the pages behind the home page), to do a little number crunching in search of a reason (I am an excellent procrastinator). So here you go:

The Bradenton event had about 109 registered athletes. At approximately $200/entry (the fees started at $150 and went up to $300) that’s $21,800 in registration fees. They promised $50,000 in prize money payout. They also gave everyone a technical T, visor, water bottle, pre-race dinner, post race party and the 90 finishers got another t-shirt, a medal and a beach towel. That had to be about $50/participant in merchandise and then there is the cost of permits, set up, timing systems, publicity, etc. Enormous sea of red ink and only 9 sponsors including the photographers and the charity. Not a good thing and surely not enough to make up for the shortfall in registration fees. Even if they had 50 vendors at an expo at $500/booth (i have no idea – I just made that up) that’s only an additional $25,000 in revenue and it costs money to set the thing up.

Clearlake looks much the same with ~150 entrants, 99 finishers, $50,000 in prized money – yada yada..

Woodlands had a whopping 420 entrants at probably an average of $250@. So that’s $105,000 in registration fees but they promised a purse of $150,000. Halifax had only 120 registered racers. The math just gets really ugly.

The really baffling part about all this is that the producers were not rookies. This was a combination of the executive director of HFP Racing, producers of some really big and well known events, and a ‘wealth management’ guy. The advisory board included the founder of Quintana Roo and the president of Infinit Nutrition. Smart men – sort of. I see them sitting slumped around a table with dream bubbles turned rain clouds over their heads and a lot of egg on their faces.

It’s really too bad because it was a great idea. Of course Bold had a much better idea – the 140.7 series with the tagline “‘everything you always wanted in an Ironman, plus”® *snort* love that.

“A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.” – — Joyce A. Myers

“When you are dreaming big, don’t forget to first run the numbers and account for the worst case scenario” – 21stCenturyMom

And on that note… my trainer awaits.