How Much Has Your "Best" Bike Cost You in Pounds per Hour of Usage?
buckmulligan
Posts: 1,031
I was just chatting to some colleagues at work about going out cycling at the weekend; the cost of my bike came up and as non-cyclists they were naturally horrified at the thought of any bike costing over £1000 :? I feel like I've racked up a fair few miles on my current "nice" (read: expensive) bike so took a wild stab in the dark and exclaimed "well it's probably cost me less than £1 per hour I've spent riding it in the two and a half years that I've had it so it's not too bad value-wise".
Naturally, this being the age of the technology, I decided to check Strava and see if that was in fact true and disappointingly I've only racked up 828 hours of bona fide cycling (i.e. not commuting) so probably somewhere around ~500 hours on my nice bike. For a bike that cost £1600 when I bought it (which I think most people here would regard as fairly reasonable for a nice bike) that still puts me at a current cost over £3 per hour!
Compared to other hobbies, I'm sure that's a bargain, but just wondering how you guys are faring? Let's keep it to your "best" bikes, because I'm guessing most people's 10 year old beaters will come in at less than £1 per hour even with maintenance costs!
Naturally, this being the age of the technology, I decided to check Strava and see if that was in fact true and disappointingly I've only racked up 828 hours of bona fide cycling (i.e. not commuting) so probably somewhere around ~500 hours on my nice bike. For a bike that cost £1600 when I bought it (which I think most people here would regard as fairly reasonable for a nice bike) that still puts me at a current cost over £3 per hour!
Compared to other hobbies, I'm sure that's a bargain, but just wondering how you guys are faring? Let's keep it to your "best" bikes, because I'm guessing most people's 10 year old beaters will come in at less than £1 per hour even with maintenance costs!
How Much Has Your "Best" Bike Cost You in Pounds per Hour of Usage? 63 votes
£20+ per hour
15%
10 votes
£10-20 per hour
7%
5 votes
£5-10 per hour
15%
10 votes
£2-5 per hour
20%
13 votes
£1-2 per hour
20%
13 votes
Less than £1 per hour
19%
12 votes
0
Posts
If anyone is getting to the point where they justify bike ownership using a cost/benefit analysis, then they're in the wrong sport/hobby, in my view...
Insightful or not, I certainly wasn't intending it to be unfriendly..?
I kind of do justify bike purchases based on how much use they will get (in a much more vague way usually). When I was barely riding, it wouldn't make sense to spend a grand on a bike that's gathering dust in the shed, now I'm back into it a bit I'm happy to spend more on something I will use.
Seems like a perfectly reasonable way of looking at it
Surprising it is that much when put into perspective but I do really enjoy the bike (Scott Foil, DI2, Zipp 404s) so don't think I'd change anything.
For once we are in agreement.
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 18
Having said that, the enjoyment, fitness, health benefits and sheer pleasure of cycling are not something I would put a price on. I still intend to spend plenty more on my hobby
It has been noted when the laundry is sorted I always have the biggest pile - and I have three teenage daughters in the house!
An annual train season ticket for me to get to work is £1,728, which is actually pretty good given I work in London and live outside the M25.
I'm pretty confident I haven't had a year where I've spent that amount on bikes, parts, clothes etc - well, perhaps one or two years ;-) - the more expensive years have been with the benefit of cycle scheme so I'm not paying the full sticker value after tax savings anyway.
I wouldn't consider driving to work - doesn't appeal to me in the least and would cost a small fortune as I'd need to get qualified and pay my first couple of years insurance, in addition to running costs.
Then I factor in that back in the day I used to spend near £50 a month on a gym membership, which I no longer need....
So yeah. Best bike is somewhere around £6 an hour although hard to be exact as bike has been through a couple of upgrades since it was new - it was £900 on cyclescheme but then had new 105 on it and some nicer wheels. It's cheaper than going to the pub, certainly....
Ergo, the more bikes you have, the more money you are making.
Perhaps it can be proven mathematically : N+1 = (£+ 0.25) x D
(D= distance; N = bikes; £= money)
Where (N+1) < (S-1)
Maths and Latin, so it must be true.
Everything else is superfluous as there are no pockets in a shroud.
Desmond Tutu
Cheap as chips even adding in chains cassettes and the odd bartape and cables.
I thought excluding commuter bikes (not necessarily commuter miles if you do them on your good bike!) would be best because, as I mentioned in the OP, I think most people will have a beater bike that we traded for two buttons and a mars bar that has been going on year-after-year. And paradoxically, I suspect most people spend the least time on the nice bikes that cost them the most.
I am a daily commuter, I have a bike-train-bike commute, the first leg to the station on my own beater bike and the last on the Boris Bikes around London. Doing the maths for both of those is quite interesting; my beater costs £250 and only racking up 20 mins per day means I'm still only just under £2 per hour; the Boris bikes are £90 per year, so at 40 mins per day for say 180 working days per year (exc. rainy and lazy days where I catch the tube!) we're talking 75p per hour, so comfortably the cheapest out of all of my options, but obviously I have zero equity in that.
Whilst I think this is a laudable philosophy, I think most people will rationalise things based on cost and not spend every last penny that they have available on a new bike. I was wondering where people draw that line in their head and how it actually pans out in reality.
If you do truly live life based on this philosophy, you can vote based on where your smiles-per-pound metric starts to trend downwards
And I'm feeling far too woolly/tired to be capable, or even be interested in totting up all those extras besides the bike price right now!
2020 Voodoo Marasa
2017 Cube Attain GTC Pro Disc 2016
2016 Voodoo Wazoo
Yeah, all those things definitely add up, especially when you approach the point where your frame is the only original part of your bike left(!) but I thought I'd try to keep it simple; I might have an audit of my email receipts at some point and see just how serious it is!