I don’t know what the average cost of entering a marathon, or half marathon, is these days. I know the marathon I run each year has increased the entry fee by about 300% in less than twenty years.

As in any other business, costs go up and they have to be passed down to consumers. Running events have gotten so big that everything about them is big. Apparently there is no economy of scale in the promotion, advertising, security, facility rental, permits, staff, medical, legal, printing, mailing and all the other expenses of an event.

That leads me to the $100 T-shirt. My wife would gladly help me find a nice T-shirt for less than $10. And she wonders, correctly, why I can’t just run 26 miles on my own, without 7000 other people. She could also point out, with appropriate sarcasm, that I usually run for solitude.

Well, I train without 7000 people. I put on the miles on my own. And I do enjoy solitude. But ultimately, the marathon is the goal I work for. I could do it all without that goal. But I don’t want to!

I wear t-shirts a lot, all summer anyway, and I like to say I don’t wear one unless I ran the race or walked the walk. (Celiac walk, a fund raiser for Celiac disease research. Good t-shirts!)

The $100 hamburger is common in general aviation, flying small airplanes. The cost of firing up the bird and flying to a nearby airport for a meal far exceeds the value of the meal by itself. It is flying for fun that just happens to include a hamburger. These days, when a lift ticket at a ski area or a round of golf is nearly $100, I guess a marathon or two per year is not a waste of money.

And I get the neat T-shirt.

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