If the cost of signing up for a Spartan Race or Tough Mudder has ever given you pause, good news: You can now use your Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Spending Account (FSA) funds to cover race registration fees. Spartan has partnered with Flex, a platform that enables HSA/FSA payments across fitness and wellness brands, to make this possible.
How using your FSA to pay for a race works
A quick refresher on how HSA and FSA accounts work: Both are funded with pre-tax dollars, meaning the money goes into them before the IRS takes its cut. When you spend those funds on a qualifying purchase, you’re effectively getting a discount equal to your tax rate. For most people, that translates to 30 to 40 percent in savings compared to paying out of pocket. So a $150 race registration might only cost you $90 to $105.
How to use your HSA/FSA to sign up for a race
The process is straightforward: If you have an HSA debit card or FSA card, it works much like any other payment method, where you just need to select it at checkout. Register for a Spartan or Tough Mudder event and pay using your HSA or FSA card. Flex then handles the eligibility verification on the backend, so you don’t have to jump through hoops to prove the expense qualifies. (If you don’t have an FSA/HSA debit card or didn’t use it when you registered, it’s unclear if you’d be able to submit you claim after the fact under this partnership; I’ve reached out to Flex and Spartan for clarification.)
The Flex partnership covers registration costs for Spartan’s portfolio of events, which includes Tough Mudder races. And it may not stop there—Spartan and Flex are reportedly looking into more ways to extend HSA/FSA eligibility for things like training programs, recovery tools, and other athlete resources down the line. That would mean the full journey from training to finish line could eventually be (partially) funded with pre-tax health dollars.
The bottom line
In the big picture, a move like this is part of a growing shift in how fitness and wellness brands are thinking about access. Gym owner Equinox announced a similar partnership with Flex last month, allowing HSA/FSA funds to go toward select memberships, personal training, recovery services, and women’s health programs. The underlying logic is the same: Physical fitness is an important part of preventative health, and your pre-tax health dollars should be able to work toward that.
If you’ve been sitting on unused FSA funds, or building up an HSA balance you haven’t fully put to work, race registration is an unexpected but worthy way to use those dollars.
