Seven Cycles – Page 69 – U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix

What Comes Around

The circle is a powerful symbol and a strong shape. Our friends at Circles Japan commissioned this paint scheme, dubbed, aptly enough, “the circle,” for a run of road and cyclocross bikes we did with them. Shinya Tanaka, Circles’ owner and big-thinker, loves the idea of iterative learning and improvement, of putting back into his cycling community all the good things he takes out. We iterated this scheme in five different colourways for him.

There are a lot of great pictures of these bikes here. It is good to work with people you can call friends, people who can teach you about their cycling culture and reinforce what we all, as bike lovers, have in common. Watch this space for more collaborations with Circles and others in our extended circle of friends.

Images: Ryota Kemmochi

Race Stays for Race Days

With road season on the horizon here in the Northern Hemisphere (they’re already racing Down Under), we are turning more of our attention to the growing list of road bikes on our build schedule. For riders who like to go fast, the go-to material of the last decade has been carbon fiber, and the reason given most is its inherent stiffness. Many of the race bikes we build incorporate carbon fiber in some way, either in the rear triangle, as in our Elium SL, or more extensively, as with our 622 SLX. Those frames can be lighter than a double-butted Ti frame, though much of that difference gets lost once the bike is completely built. Light wheels and/or components make a bigger difference to overall bike weight than the frame.

All of those bikes, the Elium SL, the 622 SLX and the double-butted Axiom SL, have titanium chain stays. We think they make for a smoother, more durable bike than carbon stays, but we have wanted to be able to make them stiffer for some time.

Now we are offering 1″ chain stays that will fit a tire as large as 28mm. These stays are more than 50% stiffer than a 7/8″ stay. That’s a big jump for a small gain in diameter. We are thinking of them as race stays for race days, for our riders who want all the stiffness and power transfer they can get out of their drivetrain, but also want the comfort and durability of a metal bike.

Some Sundays

It’s a funny post title for a Friday, but Some Sundays is how we think about the great rides of the year. Some Sundays everything is perfect, the weather, the group, the route. It all comes together in that alchemical mix. You look up from the handlebars and realize you’re having as much fun as a responsible adult has any right to. And then you’re sitting in the cafe or on the couch in the afterglow, caffeine (or beer) and endorphins swirling around in your head, the happiness of the hard-riding cyclist.

On Fridays here at Seven, there is a constant chatter about who’s riding what over the weekend. Some will ride in the woods, others on the road. Some will join big groups out of one of the local shops. Others will ride in twos and threes, everyone finding their spot, scheduling around commitments, family obligations, errands, riding at night sometimes, for fun, or because there’s just no other time.

Like you, we all aim to ride every Sunday, but life gets in the way. Despite what we all say, there are things more important than riding bikes. But some Sundays it all comes together, even when Sunday is Saturday, or Friday, or Monday morning before work.

Here’s to a great January Sunday morning ride for all of us.

Packing a Travel Bike

We built an Axiom S with S&S couplers for Mark Slavonia with our friends at City Cycle in San Francisco. This was Mark’s third Seven, and he uses it for EVERYTHING, including a lot of travel riding. We’ve talked about packing travel bikes before, in terms of the features and benefits of the various cases, and we’ve reviewed some of the frame and component choices that make the most sense for travel bikes, but ultimately, your success and enjoyment of bike travel will come down to how easy it is for you to pack and unpack your bike.

Mark wrote up his own bike packing guide and shared it with us. He also weighs in on the merits of the various coupling systems and the cases available. It’s well worth a read.

He says, “My travel bike is a Seven Axiom with optional S&S couplings. It weighs 18 lbs, 2 oz. with a 60 cm frame. The oversized titanium tubing and the stainless steel couplings make it pretty stiff overall, especially for a titanium bike. I’d use this bike for any ride or race and I never feel compromised by it.”

Thanks to Mark for allowing us to share.

On Course at CX Nationals with Mo Bruno Roy

We finally got the chance to catch up with Mo Bruno Roy after her National Championship winning ride in the single-speed race last week in Austin. She got to Austin via the Resolution Cross Cup in Dallas, where she got on the podium one of the two days in the Women’s Elite category, so she was feeling good coming into Nationals.

She says, “Early in the week (Ed: before the course turned to a muddy bog and the racing was postponed), it was dry and fast, which doesn’t really suit my strengths, but there was an off-camber, twisty section and there were three run-ups, where I thought I could make some time.”

With nearly 40 women in the field, the single-speed race more than doubled in size from 2014, and the talent reflected that growth. Zilker Park in Austin was packed with racers from all over the country, and while things went a little awry later in the week, the single-speed races went off without a hitch on Wednesday.

Mo says, “The hardest part of the race was actually a block headwind of 20-30mph you had to fight through at the beginning of every lap. For the first three laps I had 10 seconds, and at that point one mistake can kill you. I don’t normally think about that, but the announcers are saying it over and over again, which isn’t all the way helpful. I mean, you hear them. They give you the gap, which is good information, but they can also plant the seed of doubt if you let them. So at that point, I just tried to focus on what I was doing. The ground was loose and slippery, so I couldn’t go fast through the off-camber section. I had to make my time on the run ups.”

In the end, she had 40 seconds on the nearest competition and was able to celebrate alone-in-photo. This was her ‘A’ race for the year, the goal she wrote down on paper before a single race had gone off, so winning validated her plan to shift focus to races that are more fun. It was a big departure from her previous World Cup campaigns.

She says, “I seem to enjoy single-speed events throughout, not just afterwards. World Cup racing is really stressful, and single-speed isn’t like that, so that’s been working for me. As defending champ, I felt pressure. I was supposed to win, so after this one I felt a little relief, a little happiness. Mostly I was glad not to have to ride into that headwind anymore.”

If it is possible to say how proud we are to work with Mo too many times, we hope we never get there. It’s hard to describe how good it is to see good people do good things on your bikes.

See more of Mo’s bike here, here, here and here. Connect with MM Racing here. Or watch a post-race interview with Mo here.

Photos by the talented Chris McIntosh.