The expenses of being an athlete? (7,5)
I believe the answer is:
running costs
'the' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot tell whether it can be defined by this definition.
'expenses of being an athlete?' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'expenses' could be 'costs' (cost is a kind of expense) and 'costs' is located in the answer.
'an' could be 'i' (Roman numeral for one) and 'i' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for running costs that I've seen is " ready to keep going?".)