An expensive free sport

In my mind running was a free or cheap sport.  However as I'm getting into it I'm realising that there's a lot of people making a lot of money out of it.  The implication of this is that it's you and me, the common punter, who are at the base of the pyramid and expected to pay for a lot of things we're told we need or want.


For example running shoes.  They cost £50 as an absolute minimum yet we're told we should replace them every 500km.  That works out at a minimum cost of 10p/km, and with a lot of shoes being nearly twice that price it's probably cheaper to pay for the fuel in your car to drive a few miles into town than to put on your running shoes and run there.

Another example is running events.  I like just putting on my shoes, looking at a map, and going for a run.  However if you want to enter an event or race you'll need to pay an entry fee.  For a local short distance event (say 10km races) you'd be paying between £8 and £15.  I've just looked at the booking form for the Edinburgh Marathon next year and that is £48 or a bargain £29.50 for the half marathon.  In addition to that they then try and sell you add-ons.  If you did a few of those a year it would be the cost of a holiday and so I don't think that I'll be entering many formal events next year.  Similarly there are companies organising long distance runs such as following the route of Hadrians wall on a 2 day run from Carlisle to Newcastle.  The cost of this ranges from £120 for an early entry into the solo non-stop category to circa £180 to do it over two days as a normal person.  There's no way I'd be willing to pay that kind of price to someone to do a run when in my head I could probably organise something similar with a group of friends for a small fraction of the price.

In the face of all this exploitation it makes me realise how good value parkrun is, with it being a free event for everyone.  The vision of the organisers is to be commended, and I thoroughly support their sponsors including Sweatshop who are committed to helping people get into running.  I realise that this is building their market which they'll make money from, but the fact that they're removing entry barriers is I believe a good thing.