- A Word About Entry Fees

The total cost of ownership.

Thought you guys might like to see how we stack up against the competition in the pricing department. Interesting reading, especially once travel costs are added in.

SOLO CATEGORIES (w/o travel costs)
- BC Bike Race: the race, camping & meal plan: $1897
- Trans-Rockies: no solo category offered for full-distance
- The Breck Epic: the race, camping & meal plan: $1442

TEAM CATEGORIES (w/o travel costs):
- BC Bike Race: the race, camping & meal plan: $3795
- Trans-Rockies: the race, camping & meal plan: $3120
- The Breck Epic: the race, camping & meal plan: $2745

Other things to consider:
- Once you get to Breck, you don't need a car. Our venue is in town. We've got an efficient shuttle/taxi system that is at no cost to participants.
- Travel costs to Colorado (with your bikes) are substantially lower than to Canadia.
- Our beer is better. Their bacon is. Their flannel is OK too. We're considering flying in some.
- The course, brothers and sisters. The course. It is holy-shitballs good. Very little road, almost no hike-a-bike.

Why are we pointing all of this out? Well, we're getting a bit of pushback on price from a handful of folks who feel that we should be significantly less expensive. Fact is, we are. And by a lot especially when considering the total cost of participation. We're not completely unfazed by criticism though, so we took the time to work through the math...again. Why? We thought if we squeezed a bit here and there that we might be able to offer a reduction in price. Here's what we came up with:

We're not subsidized by anyone. Not the state of Colorado. Not the town of Breckenridge. Not the local marketing chamber. And as most folks will tell you, this is a difficult sponsorship year. That means that the event needs to live on revenue that it generates from its participants. This is actually a good thing - we've seen far too many great races whose business models were predicated on the sponsorship model disappear over the past few months when their patrons had to back out. By following the honest and straight-forward model of not allowing our expenses to exceed the revenue that we generate from entry fees we guarantee that we'll be around in 2010. And 11. And 12. And so on and so forth.

So we crunched the numbers looking to trim a bit of fat. And there just isn't any. The big dollars in our event are tied up in labor, which is closely related to our medical and safety plans. I can't think of a worse way to try and save money. The next runners-up on the budget scale (other places to save money) are items that would negatively impact the event experience to a degree that I'm just not comfortable with. Here in Summit County it's always been more about substance over style, yet there are certain things that make a race good and in these areas we just don't want to compromise. You'll have to accept our word that our race costs what it costs and that in deference to these challenging economic times we're already as lean as we possibly can be...and we're still the cheapest in both the straight-up and expanded comparisons.

In other breaking news, the website went live last month: BreckEpic.com. It's effin awesome. Thanks Dave Rossi. Cheggidout. In "other"other breaking news, in a nod to Upton Sinclair I'm trying to not use exclamation points anymore.

MM