Yeah, I’m a little late to the press conference posting party but that’s because I had to do a little research. So the big news? Challenge North America is now CLASH Endurance, but we already knew that because they announced it via email four hours prior to the presser so it wasn’t a surprise.

Rebranding is nothing new, the Challenge NA model was a completely different product than the rest of their operations globally so it makes sent to splinter off and do their own thing.

What I found most interesting was race entry fees for the new company. Kelly O’Mara did a beautiful fluff piece on CLASH, but no mention of changing entry fees.

So under Challenge the early bird pricing was like $220 and it maybe went up to $400 for last second entries. CLASH is starting out their pricing at $375, which is on par for IRONMAN’s pricing.

Fortune favors the bold and Bill Christy’s got a steel pair on him to ask for that much just as he’s three months off launching just his second race. While I was bullish about CLASH going into the presser the bears came out.

Bill, you have a good product, but your pricing is too far off for me to want to sign up for Daytona or any other CLASH races, $300 would be my upper limit on your brand.

Another interesting thing out of the presser was Atlanta Motor Speedway was getting an endurance race, but not a triathlon—It would be a run/bike/run. There’s water near that track so a triathlon could be pulled off, Atlanta is way too big of a market for you to not make that a triathlon.

The last notable thing was that Watkins Glen would be a 1.2-mile swim, 50-mile bike and 10-mile run. That irks me. You can still offer me your brand of an experience just do it at IRONMAN’s 70.3 distance because the distance matters, at least to me.