Yeah but then you have to give yourself a medal when you finish, and everyone in the park looks at you a bit funny…
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I wish you told me this, before I paid around $1150 to run in 7 events this year. …
But seriously, there is something about entering a event that keeps you motivated and makes you do training runs that you wouldn’t have done otherwise. If you can do the same training alone without paid events looming over you, then good on you but I find it hard.
However there is a point at which the cost enters the ridiculous territory, and this applies to concert tickets (like when a family oriented musical costs $300 a ticket) or when a marathon costs nearly $500 to enter.
There are really good value not-for-profit running events where they aren’t trying to squeeze every cent out of the current uptick in interest in running marathons/ ultras. For example the Sydney Half marathon at Olympic Park run by Athletics NSW is $85 to enter, and the Sydney Trail Series events in St Ives and Manly Dam is also around $85 for 24km races.
In contrast the UTA100km (a UTMB branded event, which rewards points and ‘running stones’ to enter the UTMB World Series Final in Mont Blanc) is $535, the Runaway Sydney Half Marathon (an Ironman event) in May is $145, and now we hear that Sydney Marathon will be around $250 now that it’s a Marathon World Major event.
Once I achieve some running goals I want to fall back to running a handful of road and trail half marathons a year, but I’ve said that before shelling out over $1000 for entries to events 
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Yeah, I know others are very expensive too.
Very much agree with you here, too.
That’s the main issue I have. Definitely see the value in entering these races as a motivation, but the significantly raising prices are annoying. Especially if you want to do more than one event a year.
Running clubs or Parkruns could be a way to stay motivated and keep training without paying through the nose for events, but for me the whole act of running is about an almost meditative experience in solitude, which is why I never run with music (aside from the safety issue). Also I run when I want, if I want and where I want, and having commitments to turn up to a certain place by a certain time every week would ruin it.
I was mostly being facetious. I’ve paid to enter cycling events before.
I find I zone out of the music anyway. But agreed, it’s really a time for me to be with my own thoughts for an hour or so. Wouldn’t mind getting to the point where I can switch those off though!
Now that’s an expensive hobby. The sum total of the cost of all my running shoes, other running gear (hydration vest, running belts etc) and the entry fees since I started running wouldn’t even get me a half decent bicycle.
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My wife has threatened to sell my bike on numerous occasions while it wasn’t being used over the past 2 years.
Problem is she doesn’t know what she could get for it 
She has relented on the threats now I am at least exercising!
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NFP doesn’t automatically mean it’s being run well, the admin busywork involved in grant writing etc can still proliferate…
I doubt it matters much to those in this thread, but the higher prices also allow for seriously professional prize money that will attract the world’s top athletes to make this their peak race rather than another one in the season.