Iron Christmas 70.3- Day 2 and a few other tidbits.

First Thin First- Today is the last day for you to declare your participation in my Iron Christmas Virtual 70.3. If you are interested see the directions from yesterday's post, since I have yet to figure out how to link a picture back to another post.

Also, let me just say thank you for the support of everyone who linked, FB'ed, Tweeted, etc. I am honestly shocked at the support and really excited. I originally was hoping that one person, maybe, would sign up and that is why I included the caveat of being allowed to compete even if you only complete 2 of the legs. With such a response I had to decide how I was going to handle the 2/3rders. Early yesterday I came up with my solution- If you are participating in the challenge and are skipping a leg due to weather, pool, fear of drowning, watching jaws too many times, etc then we will treat your time like a relay. Who is your relay partner for you missing leg? Most likely me. For any missing leg I am going to give you my time or the slowest time plus 5 minutes. Most likely it will be my time, cause well, I'm slow! BUT I'm not a Clydesdale anymore!!!!

I really wanted to break it down into two divisions but don't have the prizes to support that. Speaking of prizes, I wanted to do a care package of 70.30, but thought being Christmas I decided I would do $50 and see what I could do after that. I am very excited to say that the prize has increased in value a little due to some sponsors and has now surpassed $140.6. We can call this an Ultra Prize!

If you thoroughly read the first post you remember I said there will be a catch. This will come tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Now- back to my regular scheduled programming.

I have an odd personality and I know this, I have a mix of conservative and liberal values in my own special blend. One of these has always been that I do not talk about money, sex, or religion with others. Those are personal and often able to offend others so I avoid them. With that in mind I am going to discuss one of those today........

As I wrote in my Sunday post, between my workouts Saturday I created a spreadsheet of my expected expenditures for the next triathlon season. Between doing this and watching Kona I got lost in time and forgot to go to the other workout.

I first created a list based off of essentials that I need for training and then a few things off my wishlist. I assigned each one of them a price. For some items this price is based on what my budget is, for other items it is retail price from an online source, and others are prices I get from the company direct with discounts.

I then prioritized my purchases. For instance I can't race or train without a bike, but I don't need anything else unless I am going to race. I want shoes, helmet, and pedals, but they are at the end because I have some of each I just want to upgrade or go tri specific. The last item is a weekend wheel rental from my LBS for whatever 70.3 I do. Nice to have, but not an essential.

Barring something horribly wrong happening and me taking good care of things some of these should last me a few years. It is easy to see how the price of things quickly add up. I did not calculate nutrition, gels, or bike maintenance and it is easily is over $4,000. As a civil servant it is a VERY significant portion of my net salary and it is over 3 times the yearly allowance CB gives me. Granted, not everything is a necessity but if I do want to check everything on the list off I am going to need some more financing.

Getting a job at McD's hasn't panned out yet because they keep telling me I am overqualified; plus with another job when would I train? So I am going to start thinking of some creative fundraising options.

Here are my top three ideas-

1- Pimp out Adam for his baby making abilities

2- Selling crack candy bars door to door like in elementary school

3- Taking protection fees from other bloggers like the mafia does to businesses.

ANY OTHER IDEAS???