An Idea With The Best Intentions

As you may or may not have read, recently I've been working on a little side "project" that I hope to get going in 2009. I've shared the idea with a handful of fellow racers and riders, but now I'm gonna put my plan out there for Soiled Chamois-dom.

I'm in the process of creating a web site/web based publication called "XXC". XXC is of course the abbreviation that many race promoters use to note that a cross country race is marathon in length or a multi lap, multi hour endurance race. The UCI says that a marathon XC race is any race between 24.9 miles (40 km) and 74.5 miles (120 km). I say- "why stop at 74.5 miles??"
XXC will highlight marathons, multi-hour, multi-day endurance races, as well as all day epics, big training rides, off road touring and everything in between. There are plenty of road and mountain bike magazines, and a growing number of cyclocross magazines. But VERY few (if any) magazines dedicated solely to endurance mountain biking.

There are some great resources and sites out there for endurance mountain bike junkies, and I'm not attempting to compete with them. XXC will be about YOU and ME, by YOU and ME. It will highlight riders and racers of all abilities- from Joe Pro to Joe Six Pack. Sharing stories of a victory, a mid pack finish and or a struggle JUST to finish. Hell, share some thoughts on your DNF! I want to show the variety of emotions that play a part in our racing.

I want XXC to be a creative forum for words, photos and information about epic races and rides. Once in a while there will hopefully product information and testing geared specifically towards XXC racers and riders. I want to take what I love about magazines like Embrocation, Rouler, Urban Velo, BIKE and Dirt Rag and try to create something that endurance mountain bike freaks want to read, look at and/or be a part of.

Will this ever get off the ground in 2009 or will it be 2010? Will I loose motivation? Will it ever be anything more than a hobby and ANOTHER blog? Will it ever have advertisers? Will links and props be enough to satisfy contributors for a while? Will I ever be able to PAY folks for contributions in cash or shwag? I have NO idea!! And that's a bit scary. If nothing else, all this will allow me to get some creative work done when I "separate" from my employer in a few weeks.

XXC has a temp home on a Blogger account and things are going to be pretty ghetto for a while. Bare with me. I hope to move it to Word Press in the future to allow multiple pages, a gallery, etc., First someone (me) needs to learn how to do all that, HA!

Along with being a web site or blog, I want to publish a PDF eMagazine to view on your computer or to print out. There is currently a 10 page prototype available for folks to look at and get a basic idea of what I want to do. It's available at www.xxcmag.com. I was lucky and some fellow bloggers and photographers hooked me up with some information and great pics to use in the prototype (Thank you!!). I encourage you to click around on the PDF. Many of the pages have links embedded in them to take you to the writers web site, blog or photo gallery.

I'd like to have a real "issue" ready at the end of April sometime. At least I'd like to. Who knows? This is gonna be a work in progress for a while. If you have some words, pics, info etc, and would like to get it out there drop me a note at xxcmag (at) gmail.com.

For the first issue I hope to highlight some of the following events:

- Snotcycle (an XC race yes, but cold, snow, and ice made this one epic)

- The Arrowhead 135

- 24 Hours In The Old Pueblo

- Mas O Menos 100K

- The Camp Hilbert 5 Hour Enduro Race

- 6 Hours of Warrior Creek

- The Michaux Mass

- The Leesburg Bakers Dozen

- and a bunch of other cool stuff.

You don't have to be a pro with words or a camera. I'll tidy things up, link you up and post it up. Send me some stuff. Lets see if we can make something cool!

OK, enough about all that. I need to go organize a Big Mama bike build. Did I mention I scored a SWEET deal on a Fox shock for the Big Mama? OH yeah, It has a few miles on it, but it's a Fox!! The Big Mama is gonna be damn sweet for some all day epic adventures of my own!

Later.