Starting January 1st, 2011 MTBCast will cease as a business. It will become what it has essentially always been, a hobby. How long even that will continue remains to be determined. However, there will be no more PayPal link and no more expectation of funding.

There are a few reasons for this. My inability to garner any lasting sponsorship is part of it, in large part due to my ineptitude at it. As anyone who has met me knows, I’m a talker but not in the sense of a salesperson. This, as you might guess, means that getting the idea that podcasting would be a good avenue for advertising mountain biking wares out to vendors has been poorly done. My shortcomings, noted.

As time has gone by, however, several things happened along the way. MTBCast started 5 years ago as a weekly show. I had hoped to disseminate news about the sport with a medium that would allow people to take it with them. I don’t think it was unsuccessful in that, as people across the country and even the world tuned in and I was able to meet and in some cases befriend some of the notable professionals of the sport. It became more clear, however, that trying to do a weekly show meant having to be places too. Places I couldn’t always be. It meant making decisions on what would and would not go into the show. And it meant research.

Since the GDR and Tour Divide drew the most attention, I’ve spent the last 2 years or so focusing on them and other endurance races. This meant less frequent episodes in between races, something that I felt really bad about. Looming, and on-going, personal issues made putting together “bridge” episodes harder. But I decided that the audio for long-distance, multi-day events was important and have continued them.

Which leads to now. As a “business” MTBCast hasn’t really been viable. Perhaps in the right hands that would be different. So I will scale back considerably. Pretty much this site will be an avenue to pick up the audio and deliver it. Commentary probably is less likely for 2011. Simplification will probably be the norm. It’s a lot of work to prepare the audio, especially for large races like the TD and CTR. Once you’re getting 10 or more calls a day you’re processing 10 or more calls a day. In some cases it means editing heavily. Each audio file has to be clipped, edited, converted to MP3, then posted before it’s put out for the website, be it here or at TourDivide.org, not to mention iTunes (why more cyclists don’t use iTunes is beyond me…). That’s a lot of work. And to make it timely it means staying on top of it through the day as best I can. That is becoming harder to do, especially from the East Coast. Frankly there are other frustrations in doing so that unfortunately strain the passion I have for doing it.

So in an effort not to completely lose that passion, look to this site to become very simplified. Gone will be the sponsor links.  Only links to the various race pages as each race kicks off.