Nine issues. Wow. It probably seems like forever ago since our last issue, let alone our humble Issue 1, but for the few of us working on this mag, we can’t believe we’re already on our ninth issue. Cyclocross Magazine’s Issue 9 is mailing now, and it’s once again packed with original content. Let’s take a look at the highlights – and one lowlight.
You may have thought we headed to Disneyland after the long season, but nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, we ramped up an unprecedented team to tackle our much-beloved annual profiles of every national champion, but this year we’ve taken a step beyond just plain Q & A. We’ve authored original profiles to tell the stories of each winner and their races. It was a massive project, and we hope you like the result.
We’ve also got exclusive, behind-the-scenes reports on the big coup of Louisville Worlds, an insider’s perspective on Euro Cross Camp and the 2010 Worlds in Tabor that you never saw.
Bike Geeks have plenty to geek out on, including a carbon cyclocross fork shootout, the ultimate and affordable cyclocross drivetrain (a poor man’s Di2) and a CXM Labs feature on avoiding the dreaded pinch flat with inner tube tests. Plus we look at Independent Fabrication’s Stainless Steel cyclocross rig, the revised Ellsworth Roots, Marin’s Cortina racer and the scandium Norco CCX SL. There are additional product reviews and the usual columns from Christine Vardaros and Mark Legg-Compton. And we feature the first cycling integration of Microsoft Tags. It’s 104 pages of ‘cross joy.
But we’d be remiss to focus just on the highlights. Sadly, there are a few dark spots. Literally. Much to our surprise, and completely inconsistent with our proofs, there are a few pages with dark black and white photos, and our cover is darker than we expected as well. We’re embarrassed by the print quality on those few pages and believe that you (and we) deserve better.
So we’ll be making some significant changes to avoid this problem and have already begun our search for higher quality and consistency in printing for Issue 10, which, as the season approaches, should be along quicker than this last one.
Most parts of the country should receive Issue 9 throughout the month of June if they haven’t already, with a few areas extending into the first week of July. If you haven’t yet, sign up today to get a subscription plus Issue 9. We sold out of Issue 8 and haven’t gotten around yet to raising our prices to reflect the cover price increase with Issue 8, so don’t wait!
Thanks for reading. Is it September yet?
