After 25 years (!), Mountain Bike magazine will cease publication with the November, 2010 issue. Parent company Rodale Inc. plans to fold the content into Bicycling magazine and Bicycling.com so all is not completely lost. In a lot of ways this isn’t a huge surprise – over the past few years Mountain Bike magazine only existed as a bi-monthly supplement to Bicycling magazine. Here’s what one Rodale exec had to say about the decision:

“More and more Bicycling readers are also riding mountain bikes, extending their passion from the road to the trail, or in places like the northeast, carrying on their training through the colder months,” said Chris Lambiase, SVP / Publishing Director for Rodale’s sports titles. “Integrating Mountain Bike into Bicycling brings a new dynamic to the industry, allowing us to deliver more mountain biking content to the largest cycling audience in the world.”

Clearly many factors probably played into the decision – new niche MTB competitors like Decline, the rise of the internet, and the desire to broaden the appeal of Bicycling magazine. Still, 25 years was a long run – RIP Mountain Bike Magazine.

This post is a bit of a holiday mountain bike potpourri – enjoy!

Egg Nog Recovery Drink

Just in time for the holidays, INFINIT Nutrition has released an Egg Nog flavored sports recovery drink (seriously). From the press release, “because you’re recovering from a triathlon or 24 hours of non-stop mountain biking doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate with a little holiday cheer.” When I first read the headline I honestly threw up in my mouth a little bit but the company says they were “astounded” by the number of orders they received. I’d be astounded if they got a single order so maybe that’s not too far off.

I hadn’t heard of INFINIT before but apparently they offer customizable sports drinks you can order online and the concept is similar to the cereal company, Me & Goji, we wrote about this summer. If anything, the Egg Nog idea got us talking about INFINIT so I guess it wasn’t a completely dumb idea.

MTB Magazine Back Issues Online

If you were thinking about getting a subscription to Mountain Bike magazine this year, check this out: Google Books now has 17 complete past issues online for free. The issues are from April 2006 to November 2008 so some of the stuff may be out of date but it’s still a good way to kill some time at work. As a bonus, since it’s hosted by Google you can do a text search on the magazine – no more flipping pages to find what you want. Sweet.

UPS Using Bikes for Holiday Deliveries

Singletracks member fleetwood posted this one in the forums but if you missed it, UPS is using bike-based delivery vehicles in some California neighborhoods this holiday season. The San Jose Mercury News did a pretty lengthy write-up on the concept with pics and even a video (embedded below). It’s hard to tell from the photos but it looks like the bike even has a UPS brown paint job. Cool idea, though I doubt we’ll see this anywhere but Cali anytime soon.