Singletrack Staff Blog

Well that’s what I’ve been having, mostly. I’ve felt rather run-down and on the edge of illness, but with nothing to show for it apart from a slower-than-usual cycling speed. So I decided to take it easy over Easter, I kept off the bikes and I’m not riding until this coming weekend, when we’ll be doing a women’s bike test for the next issue. (Well I won’t, but I will be photographing it…)

I did also photograph Sim and Emily being taught ‘Advanced Cornering’ by Nigel Page. Now that was a fun day… Here’s Sim hanging it all out. Well, within reason…

Sim tries to look professional under Nigel Page’s expert gaze.

Despite the reasonably crap weather, it’s good to see the evenings lengthen - and this weekend we gain another hour of daylight. Soon there’ll be no excuse for not riding. And to add to that anticipation, I just heard that my long term test bike for this spring is on the way - a Yeti ARC… Woohoo!
And the new issue’s just come out too. Great stuff…

It’s been a while since we last updated you on the state of our website and the ongoing saga of development, so here’s the story so far…

We are working on the new site a bit at a time. That means you are not going to see large changes happen at once. Some changes have started to happen and you may have noticed a few layout tweaks to the site over the last few days. We’ve tried to get rid of the right hand column in as much of the site as possible to try and make the pages look less cluttered. We’ve also buggered about with the menu tabs to try and make parts of the site that were gathering dust a bit easier to find.

These are all cosmetic changes mostly. The real development of new features is happening in the background and at long last we are all happy that we can see stuff actually taking shape.

The online shop is currently having a face lift. The front of the site is just about there but there’s lots of messy image and layout stuff still to be done inside some of the pages, but even while we’ve been out with the paintbrushes we’ve managed to get some new stuff in there, like our tea mugs and a few more DVD titles.

On the subject of DVDs I’ll be gathering together the last few end of lines we have with some of our older stock next week to put together a pretty good sale.

I’ve also been messing about with facebook over the last few weeks and there’s now a Singletrack Fan page on facebook you can go and have a look at. Just click the new ‘Blogs’ tab on the main menu of the site to have a look.

Right, that’s about it for the moment. More site development news as it happens

Just been out for a couple of hours (i seem to be coming down with a cold but couldn’t resist a ride) to see what it was like…… IT IS BLOODY FAST!!! ;p Massively capable and chuckable, with the forks wound down it’s like a portly Xc bike up hill… If it doesn’t put me in A&E this year I won’t have been trying hard enough ;]

Pics very soon.

Food followers off this blog will also be keen to know that we have Mutton in the oven here, (7.5 pounds for £20.00!) That’s been Marinated in red wine, olive oil, garlic, rosemary red onions and smoked Paprika, it’s currently in at 110 for six hours…. The smell off it raw is quiet disconcerting, very strong uric acid over tones, with a kind off gamey-ness in the background.

Were having roast potatoes (my choice of mashed Celeriac was vetoed) Savoy cabbage, baked carrots and Leeks with cheese sauce with it

I’ll let you know what it’s like.

UPDATE

The Mutton was very good. Has also been a curry and there’s still some left for a casserole, I though have spent the last two days in bed with a cold/strong urge to vomit! ;[ I have caught up on some (re)reading though. Larry Niven’s Ringworld, which is great ‘hard science” Sci fi, although it has led to strange dreams….

and yet another long termer.

I’ve gone for a replacement to my recently deceased old faithful. A chopped and converted Kona Kilaeau frame which has been replaced by, erm, another Kona Kilaeau frame that has been chopped and converted.

This time though I’ve had the good fortune to  get a set of Paragon Machineworks sliding dropouts so there’ll be no v brake pad and rim replacement worries with this one. XTR disks will be stopping me on this one, front and back.
I’ve bought my first ever Chris King headset, Hope have very kindly helped out with a pair of my favourite Pro II hubs and a ceramic HT2 bottom bracket. I’m aiming for minimal fettling time and near zero maintainence.

Wheels have been built (on DT 4.1d’s) but not trued yet, I’ve still to source a seatpost (it’s going to have to be Thomson to match the stem), and need to decide on XTR cranks or the new Race Face Next carbons that are calling me….

I’ll be mulling that one over while skiing next week

Big thanks to Neil @ Hope for the anodising on the sliding dropouts, the attention is all in the detail

Matt’s new Orange Alpine 5 build weighs 29.6 lbs.

My old Klein Attitude weighs 25.9 lbs.

I’m sure Matt’s bike is way more than 2.7 lbs (that’s actually 3.7 pound heavier but who’s counting- Matt) faster on anything except smooth climbs!

Mental

Whilst finishing the latest issue of the mag a big, yet surprisingly light, box from Madison arrived. Inside were a more bits to help me get my Giant Anthem up and running.

A full Shimano XTR drivetrain should see me flicking through the gears like a pro even if I’m not riding like one and DT Swiss 4.2D rims are plenty light and, importantly, have red decals to match the frame. I’m only partially joking…
I’ll be converting these to tubeless, as is the fashion round here it would seem, and will be trying out the rather splendid looking Maxxis CrossMark tyres.

So, it’s getting there, just a few more bits needed then I can actually get riding it!

I’ve just set up some tubeless-with-sealant wheels on Matthew’s new bike build (Orange Alpine 5).

Stan’s No Tubes “Flow” rims (and rimstrips and sealant) and a pair of Bontrager Big Earl 2.35 Tubeless Ready tyres.

Again, I fully expected them to be an afternoon’s worth of swearing, spoiled clothes, shredded knuckles and sweat.

But no. Strips went on the rims no prob’s. Tyres went on the rims no probs (a bit on the tight side but nothing too arduous). Half a cup of sealant chucked in no probs. Tyres inflated no probs (no need for soapy water or anything).

And the tyres are still up to pressure a couple of hours later.

I think I’m in danger of becoming one of those annoyingly keen tubeless zealots. Eek!

(p.s. Matt’s new bike looks ACE. I’m quite envious..)

A familiar scene - it’s Sunday, I’m in the office with proofs to correct, some high calorie junk food and a pint of coffee. Must be deadline time again. Despite it claiming another weekend of my life, this issue’s been going together well and we know we’ll hit tomorrow’s deadline. If we can save another two days next issue, then I get a weekend back in which to go riding. Now that WOULD be a treat.

In other, less whingeing news, I’ve just heard that there’s a Yeti ARC frame on its way for me. That’s going to be this summer’s light, fast, race machine, and I can’t wait to start shopping for bits for it. I’ve also been having a bit of a clearout and brought my pink Bianchi PUSS singlespeed into work to give to Matt. He’ll ride it far more than I would - and I still have my Surly Karate Monkey 29er for the two or three times a year I ride one speeds. Now I need to tidy my cellar… A job for next week I think.

I’ve had my head buried in the accounts for what seems like weeks now. Sadly, despite the monotony and the fact it’s about as far from riding bikes as you can get, I’ve found it really quite interesting. I admit that’s probably mostly down to th efact that they are OUR numbers and not someone elses. I can’t imagine the tedium of being an accountant for a wallpaper company. But these are our numbers and that makes it thankfully a lot more interesting.

So here’s a few of the impressive ones..

Paper Weights
The last issue of Singletrack (issue 40) had a print run of just short of 24,000 copies and issue 39 sold a total of just a few dozen short of 15,500 copies! On first look that looks terribly wasteful and it is really. But as it turns out we are one of the most efficient titles on sale in the Newstrade. Yes that’s right! For every two copies of Singletrack sold another copy doesn’t sell. And those unsold copies get turned into pulp by the newstrade. They do end up being mostly turned into more mags but even so, it turns out that selling magazines is very wasteful. Learning all about this stuff is what is making me look at ways to make Singletrack more efficient on the newstand. It’s also another reason to buy our PDF version of the mag too.

Digital Print
For every standard subscription we sell currently we sell two Premium Subscriptions. Our Premium Subscriptions are subs that include the usual seven printed issues but also access to our entire back catalog of PDF downloads. To be honest we only really introduced the PDF version of the mag to try and offer our overseas readers a version of Singletrack that is more affordable than the print version. In the US a copy of Singletrack ends up being around $12 on the shelf! That makes it tough to compete when the domestic titles are selling for a fraction of that. But to our surprise it seem PDF copies are universally popular even here at home where we sell printed copies the cheapest.

Subscribers
There’s currently 4436 subscribers to Singletrack. Our subscriber levels have NEVER reduced in all our seven years.

They love us!
WHSmiths seem to be going bonkers for us! There are about 525 WHSmiths stores in the UK and they are pretty much the dominating force in magazine retailing although Tesco are trying to grab some of that share from them (Remember how it always used to be fruit and veg you hit first when you went in the supermarket? Now it’s racks of mags and newspapers). Well last week we found out that WHSmith have increased us yet again in terms of the number of shops they stock us in. Now we are to be found in 495 WHSmiths, that’s lots more than majority of other bike titles out there. And then there’s Tesco. they currently have us on the shelves of 250 of their biggest stores. Adding up the numbers from all over the UK it seems we are on the shelves of a grand total of 3000 shops, which is a lot more than this time last year.

All in all, Singletrack is easily the fastest growing mountain bike mag in the UK by a long way! And even though I’ve spent the best part of the last month moving numbers around on a screen, that sort of information really does remind me that I reckon I have the best job in the world. I just need to ride bikes a bit more

I saw budding leaves on trees yesterday. And I reckon by this Friday, it’s going to be light enough to ride home without lights*. Spring is definitely happening, whatever the weather has to say about it… It’s time to think about longer rides (or any rides at all) and planning things for those long, summer days. Beers in the sunshine after a long ride? It’s not too far off… Keep the faith.

* The irony is that I’ll be working late this week as we’re on deadline. Oh well. Definitely next week then…