Took my eldest to the velodrome for a taster session today. He loved it and was confident and competent on the track. How much of an expensive hobby is this going to turn out to be?

One of the cheapest forms of cycling tbh. Hoy velodrome is cheap, track bikes can be had for very little money and wear and tear is minimal – no water or mud.

the only real expense is fluids …. boy don’t you drink loads when
using the boards !!!!!!

Just back from a 2 pm drop-in at Glasgow.

My track bike is a modestly specced Dolan PreCursa and cost about £650 all in. They can be had new for under £500. The accreditation process, using hire bikes, costs around £65 over 4 sessions and once accredited, drop ins are £8.40 with your own bike or I think an extra couple of quid for a hire bike.

Great fun on a day like today 🙂

Not expensive at all when he wins Olympic gold, does some breakfast cereal adverts and pays off your mortgage 🙂

Did my accreditation at the hoy velodrome, only cost about £65 to complete. As ianc says you can do the drop in and it’s fairly cheap. Great fun and the bikes are reasonably cheap to purchase in comparison to anything else and they’ll last!

Biggest ongoing cost (once you’ve sorted a bike out) is likely to be fuel in getting to the velodrome and back. Oh, and the coffee and cake while you wait in the cafe 😀

Biggest ongoing cost (once you’ve sorted a bike out) is likely to be fuel in getting to the velodrome and back.

Even in Mountain Biking (the most expensive form of cycling ?) my biggest cost is usually fuel getting to/from the locations where the trails start.

I think I spend about £1000 a year in fuel for this plus Christ knows how much costs for the wear it is causing the car, exceeding the second biggest cost – which is £800 a year on bike maintenance caused by the mud.

Despite all mathematical evidence to the contrary it’s much cheaper if you get into it as well 😉

If you are interested, my son has just outgrown his Dolan Precursa, looking for around £270 for it (size 52 I think but can double check later).

I am at Newport velodrome a couple of times a week if interested.

Edit: there is a really good kids club on Saturday mornings (run by Newport Velo club). If you have your own bike the session is only £4!

@grannyjone – the cost of motoring, especially if you have a newish car on some form of loan/purchase agreement, can approach that of a typical mortgage! We were paying just short of £200pcm for the car, plus VED plus insurance plus service costs then there’s the cost of fuel.

We had a taster session with the club at Manchester Velodrome a year or so ago and the cost for 15 including bike and shoe hire was about £25 per person, so £370 to hire the national venue for an hour, can’t be bad. Out of interest I checked how much to hire Wembley stadium – £250,000 to £750,000 😮

I’m considering joining Newport Olympic to get more track cycling in. They have some good sessions booked.

The thing to remember about track cycling vs MTBing is that indoors stuff doesn’t really wear out!

The thing to remember about track cycling vs MTBing is that indoors stuff doesn’t really wear out!

Actually, the most important thing to remember is that you can’t stop pedalling and freewheel…… 😳

I only did it once, on first accreditation session, thankfully nowhere near any other riders 😀

Good point Iain!