One thing runningahead.com helps you do is track costs per mile with your equipment. I get about 500 miles out of a pair of running shoes, so if I pay $125 for the shoes, that’s about 25 cents per mile. It takes me about 10 minutes to run a mile, so that’s a cost of $1.50 per hour of recreation in the shoes.
I spent about $750 on my road bike. I didn’t take notes, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t include tax, so the actual cost was more like $825. I’ve cycled about 1700 miles on my road bike so far, and I *hope* to get about 5000 miles out of it. My bike was an entry level Specialized, which means it’s probably made well, but the components are about as cheap as you can get for a “brand name” bike. So we’ll see if 5000 miles is really realistic. In any case, if I do get 5000 miles, that’ll be $0.17 per mile. I can ride about 12 miles per hour, so that works out to about $2 per hour – only slightly more expensive than running.
However, biking has a lot of extra costs. The only thing I’ve spent much money on other than shoes for running is my GPS watch – $500 (!) – and running clothes aren’t super expensive and last a very long time. My running shirts, for example, I’ve had about five years, and they are in great shape despite probably a thousand miles of use in each of them. I probably paid $40 to $60 per shirt. For biking, bibs and jerseys cost A LOT more. You can definitely go budget on jerseys, or just wear a T-shirt, but I had major issues with chafing and a sore butt (sorry for TMI) when I started cycling. After wasting money on a couple pairs of budget bib shorts, I ended up spending about $200 for my current bib shorts, and they won’t last forever. I’m already contemplating getting a second pair. I replaced the pedals on my bike with clipless pedals ($40) plus the tool to install them ($12) plus shoes to go with them ($160). I bought a couple of bottle holders ($10) plus bottles ($35). An extra bright bike light ($40). A helmet ($40) and a replacement helmet after I crashed wearing the first one ($70). Tubes for my tires (for flats) ($40). A book on bike maintenance ($20). A patch kit ($7). A bike pump ($40). And probably a bunch more stuff. Honestly, it’s crazy to add it all up.
I give myself a weekly budget to spend on whatever I need or want from clothes to hobbies. When I’m not biking, I find it reasonably doable to stay on budget. When I AM biking, I instantly start feeling budget pressure.