Why pay $330 to run a marathon? Let me try to explain.

• This summer, I spent $333.11 to register for the 2026 New York City Marathon.
• Between race registration fees and travel, I spend thousands of dollars a year on endurance events.
• It’s money spent in alignment with my values, which experts say is the way to spend.

You know the type of person who does run club? The one who wakes up before the sun on a Sunday to stack miles and finishes the run at a coffee shop, still sweating as they’re waiting in line captioning their Strava post? That’s me. I’m that person.

I’m also among the group of people who spend a lot of money to safety-pin a number to their shirt and run from a start line to a finish line in exchange for a generic tech tee, a medal, and a banana.

This summer, I spent $333.11 to register for the 2026 New York City Marathon. I didn’t bat an eye at checkout — not because I’m rich and the purchase wasn’t significant. I’m not, and it was. But, to borrow one of Ramit Sethi’s spending concepts, registration fees for endurance events would be one of my top “Money Dials,” which are essentially spending categories that you can either turn up or down. It’s how I like to spend my discretionary income, and since I cut back in other areas, I can do so guilt-free, no matter how egregious the registration fee.

I came up with the idea to write this particular story on a run. It was a Tuesday in June. I know the date because I left myself an eight-second voice memo recording the idea: “Why pay $300 for a marathon — to run 26.2 miles? Let me try to explain,” I say, slightly out of breath.

Why do I pay a lot of money to run marathons? And why the marathon — the 26.2-mile event? Why do I invest not only so much money but also so much time in training and racing? I’m not a professional, and never will be. My time is precious, but my chip time doesn’t matter to anyone but me.

For the past four months, I’ve pondered those questions — casually at first, and more urgently as the race (and the deadline for this article) approached.

My first thought was to distinguish between running and racing.

I picked up long-distance running in my early 20s, after more than a decade of junior tennis and four years of collegiate tennis had left me burned out on the sport. I was living in New York City, where finicky weather, high court fees, and complicated logistics make it difficult to hit a tennis ball, even if I wanted to. Looking for an affordable and efficient way to stay in shape, I turned to running. It was perfect for me: a minimalist who doesn’t like stuff or clutter. I already had everything I needed: a pair of Nikes and easy access to a smooth running path.

As an introvert, running suited me, giving me the time and space to think, plan, ideate, or simply check out of life’s stressors. And the more I ran, the better I got at it. My marathon times started to suggest that I was decent at the distance — qualifying for the Boston Marathon is considered the pinnacle for amateur marathoners, a feat I’ve accomplished a few times — so maybe that’s part of the reason I kept running, even if getting better made the activity a little more expensive. We all tend to gravitate toward the things we’re good at, don’t we?

If running is meditative, rhythmic, and solitary, racing is exhilarating, hectic, and communal. It’s a shared experience. You toe the line with thousands — sometimes tens of thousands — of other runners. But unless you’re vying for the podium, you’re not competing against them. You’re racing the clock and your past self — alongside, not against, thousands of others.

Preparing for a marathon is challenging. It requires time, patience, and work — stacking miles and workouts for months. It’s also incredibly satisfying. By the time race day rolls around, the hard part is done.

If running is simple, efficient, and cheap, racing is coordinated, time-consuming, and expensive.

That $333 entry fee was just the beginning of my expenses for this experience. I bought round-trip flights from Los Angeles and a really expensive pair of “super shoes” for race day. When I’m racing in a city where I don’t have friends or family, hotels add up quickly.

But back to Sethi and his “Money Dials,” how you choose to spend your money matters. In fact, studies show that how you spend is oftentimes more important than how much you spend.

Sethi’s point is that, no matter your Money Dial — fitness, travel, experiences, or relationships — you can build a life that allows you to “spend extravagantly and unapologetically on the things that truly matter,” while cutting costs “mercilessly” on the things that don’t matter to you.

Simply put: Spend on things that make you happy; don’t spend on things that aren’t important to you.

The 2026 New York City Marathon will be my 21st marathon. I keep track in the Notes app on my phone, recording my times, what I ate the night before, how many gels I consumed, and other random tidbits from the training block or race day.

What you get out of the race is entirely up to you. Your goal can be to run the fastest you ever have — a personal record, or “PR” — or it can be to simply cross the line with a smile on your face.

Of all the races I’ve done, the New York City Marathon is my favorite by far. Nearly 60,000 runners gather in Staten Island on the first Sunday of November to run through the city’s five boroughs, absorbing high fives and hearty cheers from the millions of New Yorkers lining streets.

Anything can happen over the course of 26.2 miles, another component of the marathon’s charm. You could cramp up and blow up. You could get an assist from a tailwind and negative split.

It’s nearly impossible to have a perfect day, but sometimes race day magic strikes.

See you out there. Let’s dial it up.