How to Spend $270 in 10 Minutes

Have I mentioned that triathlons are an effing expensive sport? Oh how I miss the “I only run” days — $120 for a good pair of running shoes a couple times a year is a laughable expense compared to what I bleed out every season for triathlons. Today Speedy Reedy happily took $270 from me. Between my time trial bike, countless fuel purchases, new tubes, and other paraphanalia, I think I single-handedly financed their move into a new building.

Why was I at Speedy Reedy this time? Well, seeing as how I’m one of the unluckiest cyclists on our team, earlier this week I noticed a chunk missing from my rear tire. You’ve got to be kidding me — last year I blogged about how I had to replace my front tire after I shredded it on a B.S. ride in Lake Stevens. One year later and wouldn’t you know it, I have to replace the rear tire too. Son of a bitch.

By the way, let me interject by saying that after nearly three years of this sport, I’ve gotten seven flats and have ruined three tires (the first of which was for a bike that wasn’t even mine — I had borrowed it from a former coworker). Jason has had one flat that happened during a training ride, and he didn’t even have to change it because his dad did it for him. I call epic bullshit on this, which makes him mad because he’s convinced I’m jinxing him for the biggest bike fail ever when we race in Canada.

Anyway, back to the rear tire. There goes $40 right there. I also had to buy a new bike computer because my old one has been acting on the fritz lately and the cadence sensor stopped working. When you start training with a bike computer, you quickly become unnaturally attached to it. I mentioned before about how I almost forgot it before Boise 70.3 and went into a panic because I wasn’t going to know my cadence while racing. I replaced my bike computer with a new wireless one that cost $110. Pricey, but necessary in my opinion.

Where’d the rest of my money go? Frickin’ fuel. I’m starting to spend more on training fuel than on actual groceries. You’d be surprised by how many stupid gels we consume in a week. This crap never seems to last very long. I shelled out a dumb amount of money for drink mix, Rocktane, and Hammer gels. One time someone mentioned to me how he doesn’t understand why I need to refuel with calorie drinks and gels during workouts because he never does and he seems to do fine. I had to remind him that exercising for 1-2 hours at an easy to moderate pace isn’t the same as a four or five hour workout and trying to prep your body to be able to carry you through a several hour-long race. It’s easy to forget that the general public isn’t as insane as us endurance athletes.

So just like that, I dropped nearly three hundred bones in a short amount of time. You’d think that’d be the end of the spending, but I still need to get a new helmet, replace my sad, pathetic bike trainer, and hopefully spring for a new pair of sunglasses and recovery tights sometime this season, not to mention the perpetual wave of team gear that Teresa seems to always be ordering. *shakes fist* I actually have most of my receipts from each season, so maybe if I’m feeling especially depressed, I can add them up to see how much I spend annually on this sport. I’ll save that for a future post…in the meantime, I’m accepting donations for a real grocery store trip because I don’t think Jason would appreciate a dinner of pineapple Roctane and watermelon sport beans.