Interview – Seven Cycles

The Interview

Before we built our first bike, before we even settled on the name Seven, we asked ourselves why we would start a new bike company. What did we have to offer that wasn’t already available? What could we do that was both wholly different and highly valuable to the cyclists who might work with us? It is too simple to say that we decided that building custom bikes on a short timeline was the answer. In many ways, those things were just by-products of the actual answer, which is that we decided to build exactly the bikes people wanted, rather than building the bikes we liked and trying to convince riders they were cool.

Custom builders had been doing something like this for more than a century, but had confined their consultation with the rider primarily to measurements. They focused on fit. What we set out to do started with fit but extended to things like ride feel, handling, comfort, options, aesthetics, a full collaboration with the rider. No other custom builder had conducted such systematized interviews.

And, the design interviews we conduct with our riders are more, for us, than just a consultation about a single bike. Together they form a massive research project that allows us to understand not just what people buy, but what they want. By sharing their vision with us, our customers make it possible for us to react very quickly to new trends and ideas. The interview lets us build them their perfect bike, but their input helps us build our perfect company, one that builds fully custom bikes for real people on a short timeline through a unique collaboration. It’s the interview that lets us be more than a bike company, but a real rider company.

CyclingNews.com: A Vocal Nomad Living Her Dream

When USA Cycling and the U.S. Olympic Committee announced its selection to fill the single allocated slot in the 2004 Athens women’s mountain bike race, Mary McConneloug (Seven Cycles) came in second—by one point. After a scan of the criteria and the calculations used to come up with the selection, McConneloug knew she had to stand up and dispute the results. She could have been quiet. She could have accepted the mistake, faded into the off-season and wait her next chance to race in the world’s greatest venue. But she didn’t.

Instead, she summoned the courage to ask for a review by an independent arbitrator. For her trouble, she suffered the indignity of being branded a sore loser, of media scrutiny that sensationalized the dispute as a personal battle between her and Sue Haywood, the originally selected racer and a woman McConneloug considers a good friend to this day. The Fairfax, California native says she stood firm “not just for me, but for the integrity of the sport” and she was rewarded with one of the sweetest days of racing in her six-year career.

Cyclingnews’ Steve Medcroft caught up with U.S. Olympian, U.S. National Mountain Bike Cross Country Champion and cyclocross racer Mary McConneloug at her off-season hunting grounds on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts—to learn more about her nomadic lifestyle, her reflection on racing and about that hot Wednesday afternoon in Athens.

A Vocal Mountain Biker

Cyclingnews: You’ve said before that you started riding bicycles to and from school when you were six years old and have always ridden for transportation, but riding professionally wasn’t your first aspiration. You went to school for something else entirely, right?

Mary McConneloug:I went to Santa Clara University and studied voice. I sang classical and opera, giving recitals and singing in different languages. I played piano also.

CN: Are you still involved with music?

MM: I am, but in a transformed way. I always will have my love for singing and for making music but what I did before was more performance. I didn’t write anything; I just performed and sang songs written by other people. These days, I prefer to do improvisation. Michael (Broderick, McConneloug’s long time partner and teammate) plays guitar and just last night for the first time this year we got together with his brother and a friend and play music. This isn’t the harpsichord-accompanied classical music I used to perform, this was electric guitar, electric bass, and drums. I got on vocals and had fun, making up words and falling into a funk/blues/jazz vibe. So yes, I am still involved with music but it has evolved into something different. I don’t have a lot of time for it, which is what it takes to be one of the top musicians, but I love it anyway.

CN: Were you on a music career-path before cycling?

MM: I had goals but now that I look back I know I wasn’t as serious as I am about mountain biking. I was offered a scholarship and I didn’t know what else I wanted to major in so I majored in music. The career options with that major are to teach or perform. I knew I wanted to perform but again, I didn’t approach it as serious as I approach what I do now.

CN: Are there elements of your vocal training or philosophy that translate into your cycling career?

MM: I think I’ve taken a lot of what I’ve learned from my music to my mountain biking. Physically, learning how to breathe deep and using that breath in an efficient way has helped me. Learning how to perform on the spot has helped too—in recitals, for example, if you forget words or make mistakes, you just have to carry on. And never let the audience know that things were messed up. I took that sense of improv under pressure with me into mountain biking. If I get a flat tire, break a chain, I feel like I’m able to just fix it and go on. With a smile on my face. I also learned to be disciplined—in music that mean to train my voice and learn the materials I was performing. In mountain biking, it means the discipline to be able to focus, see where my weaknesses are and work at them.

From Sport to Pro in one year

CN: What took you to your first mountain bike race?

MM: Someone mentioned it to me about four years before I actually did it. I used to ride a mountain bike all the time. I had always been an athletic kid. I just loved sports: I loved P.E., kickball, dodge ball, jump rope, anything. I was always climbing trees, always playing outside. I loved nature and being outside. My family, for fun and for vacations, would go camping. Every Sunday we’d hike after church. I spent a lot of time outdoors in Marin County and that’s a huge reason why I love mountain biking so much. All I wanted to do was be outside, play outside and ride my bike. As I grew up, I rode my mountain bike all the time. No Lycra or anything like that, just high top tennis shoes. I guess I did carry a few tools but no helmet, no special clothes. I’d ride for fun, for hours at a time.

So this person said something like, “You’re speedy, you should try mountain bike racing” and I never did it. Three years later, I was living in Seattle. On my days off I’d mountain bike and my boyfriend at the time said, “Mary, you should try mountain bike racing, you’d love it.” It sounded fun so I gave it a shot.

CN: You turned pro very quickly?

MM: My first year, I did two races as a Sport class rider then moved up to Expert. I decided to upgrade to pro because one day I beat the pro rider and got a tee shirt instead of the money. I also met Mike that first year. Then we started traveling and since then we’ve split time between Mike’s family’s home on Martha’s Vineyard and my family’s home in Marin, with all the time in between traveling and racing.

CN: You lead something of a nomadic lifestyle then?

MM: Yeah. If you’re on a tight budget, if you don’t have a home, being a nomad works. In my case it has been necessary because at times literally all I’ve had are my bikes, my passion for cycling and some really great friends and family. The fact that Mike is also a professional mountain bike racer and he has so much passion for the sport as well makes it easy. We take our home with us where we go.

CN: Were you a nomad or a mountain biker first?

MM: I think I evolved into being a nomad. I’ve always loved to travel. I did Europe with a backpack right out of college. I traveled across Canada with my sister; our mountain bikes in the back of a Volkswagen van. But mountain biking really lends itself to being a nomad. The races are scattered all over the United States and I’ve always been tight with the budget. We drive, camp, cook and race. It’s just how we live.

CN: How did you get by early in your career? Were you sponsored?

MM: Mrazek (a Czech manufacturer) was my first sponsor—they gave me a frame. Then I raced for Team Micro Supreme on a Gunnar from Richard Schwinn’s [grandson of the Schwinn] Waterford factory in Wisconsin [the original Schwinn manufacturing facility]. I was getting by with bike frames for a while then Jamba Juice picked me up in 2000. It was a great team, my first where everyone had matching jerseys and some expenses covered. We actually got to stay in condos at the NORBA nationals instead of sleeping in a tent.

The next year, the Jamba Juice sponsorship ended and we didn’t know what we were going to do. I started out the year finishing third in short track at the NORBA national in Big Bear. We had just sent our resume out to Seven Cycles and after that race they told us to come by. We drove all the way to the East coast, where they measured us. A week later they had our frames ready. We did the nationals at Red Wing right after and I remember that race vividly. I made it to the podium in cross country for the first time. It was exciting to have the support of our new sponsors. The fact that they accepted Mike and I as a couple was just the coolest thing. That was the beginning of my true career in the sport.

CN: Has life gotten any easier now that you’re a seasoned pro? Couldn’t you now sign on with a full factory team and have all your needs met?

MM: I think we’re going to continue with our simple approach. Both Mike and I like to have the freedom to choose when and where we’re going to race. One of the things about the big factory teams is that when they decide that you’re done, you’re done. I don’t like anyone to have control of me like that.

I feel like we have also invested a lot of time and effort in building the relationship with these companies. We’ve hand selected who we work with because we really believe they’re the best products out there. We run them for reasons of superior quality and performance. Stan at NoTubes.com is a great example of this. The guy is incredible. We were racing for Jamba Juice in 2000 and Stan’s wife Cindy approached us. The product is cutting edge technology and has absolutely helped us rise to the top. I feel like that it’s the companies like this—that took the time to care about us when we were peons—that deserve our loyalty now I’m an Olympian.

CN: Let’s shift to racing. I see a national championship, silver medal in a Pan-Am Games. How did your career progress?

MM: The national championship year was great. Mike and I were traveling around in our inherited Seven Cycles van with a trailer, which was our makeshift shop. We camped all over the United Stated. We drove up, down, zigzagged all over the place to make it to every single NORBA national even though there was no prize money and no UCI points—just for the sheer love of racing our mountain bikes. I raced consistently all year long and then in Mount Snow, Vermont, I just took it. It was the first NORBA race I ever won and I just took it. That race showed me that I could win, that I could beat Alison Sydor and Jimena Florit. Just to have a glimpse of that was huge. From there, the next biggest highlight in has to be the world cup race in Calgary where I finished second behind Gunn-Rita Dahle.

CN: You got the hole shot and held onto it?

MM: Oh no. I was riding back in tenth through the single track but I knew that there were climbs coming up within the single track where I’d be able to pass if I didn’t blow it all in the start loop. Sure enough, riders were just blown by the time they got to the single track and I was able to just squeak by people right and left, up and down. Next thing I know I riding right behind Anabella Stropparo. I could see Gunn-Rita Dahle ahead of us. Annabella was sort of holding me up in the single track and I knew that I could get around her so pedal stroke by pedal stroke I worked and ended up riding away from her. I closed in on Gunn-Rita and ended up only 45 seconds back at the finish, which was as close as anyone was getting all year round. This was right before the Olympic selection. I felt that I proved I was worthy.

An Olympic controversy

“I needed to speak up. Not just for me but for the integrity of the sport.”
—McConneloug on her appeal to get into the Olympic team

CN: Okay, about the Olympics. It must have taken a lot of courage to stand up and contest a decision that put Sue Haywood into the single U.S. Olympic slot. What was going through your mind when you decided something wasn’t right with the selection points?

MM: It was a huge lesson for me. In the weeks leading up to the selection I was being told, “Whatever the choice is, you have the right to an arbitration.” It was as if USA Cycling and the USOC was expecting arbitration no matter who was chosen. The fact that it came down to one point according to them meant that I just couldn’t sit there and take it. All year I had felt like getting to the Olympics would have only been a bonus on an already incredible season for me and we weren’t expecting to go but when it came down to one point I was like, “Wait a minute here.” I just wanted a third-party neutral decision on this because the criteria they used to justify the selection seemed to be full of discrepancies compared to the stated criteria. I needed to speak up. Not just for me but for the integrity of the sport.

CN: You prevailed thorough the process and got to represent the U.S. in Athens. How was the race, the experience altogether?

MM: It was incredible to be in Athens. To actually get there—to show up in the hot, dry air with the wind was blowing and realize, “I’m in this totally foreign land for the race of my life.” I stayed in the athlete’s village for five days and just to be there was pretty spiritual, an incredible journey. Although the other people in the village had no idea what I had to do to get there, I knew. And was going to everything in my power to be as ready to race as I could be. I stayed in my room, did my yoga, chilled out, focused on the course and training. The course was beautiful.

I was so ready to race when it finally came. I remember getting my call-up, second to the line because of my ranking. My family had come all the way from California. My sponsors came from Boston. Mike took the RV down on a Saturday and met me there. It was incredible. Then the gun went off and I bogged. I shouldn’t have started in my big ring. Even thought the start was flat and on kind of a slight incline, I should have been in my middle ring so I could get out front. So I bogged a little bit and as soon as I knew it, I was in the tenth spot. I charged up this hill, messed up a little corner up and ended up fifteen back and all in the first three minutes, there went my chance of being in the front. But that’s how racing is, you know. Things happen and you just need to adjust and deal.

It was so hot that day, probably 90 degrees in the shade at 11 when we started and hotter still over the two hours of the race. In each lap, I moved forward a couple of spots and on the last lap I made it back to ninth. It was victory for me. I had come back from so far. It was incredible to be there, to finish in the top ten.

CN: Cyclocross season is in full swing. You’re a crosser as well?

MM: I am a cyclocross racer. I love cyclocross. When I came back, I thought that I would just do some racing for fun, take time off and train lightly. I still had a little bit of fitness from the year though and last weekend (Gloucester US Gran Prix of Cyclocross events), I realized I can’t just race for fun because when I get out there I want to win. And if I want to win, I have to train hard. So then, despite wanting a break, I still have real ambitions for the ‘cross season, times when I feel like, “Yes, I want to do this, I want to go to nationals, maybe have a shot at being national champ.” Then I have other moments when I just want to pick cranberries, bake bread and hang out.

So for now, I’m just going to take it day by day and we’ll decide in the next few weeks whether we should go out to nationals (December 10 through 12th, 2004 in Portland, Oregon).

CN: Your career has grown organically over the years. Are here some specific goals that keep you moving forward?

MM: I have a long-term goal right now that I will be hard and firm on for the next four years: I want to race in Beijing, have another shot at the Olympics. As for 2005, I want to keep seeing my fitness rise to that next level. I’m just seeing clearly now that success in racing is really about commitment and dedication and over the years you become able to commit more and dedicate more. I’m at that point where this is all I want to do. So yes, I want to be national champion next year and yes I’d love to win NORBA’s and get up on that podium for the world cups. I definitely have goals but I think you get there by keeping the flow and the balance and having fun at it too. Do that and life is sweet.

VeloNews Q&A: Seven’s custom niche

Rob Vandermark has always had a knack for turning the impossible into the desirable. As the head designer for Merlin Metalworks, back when Merlin was a struggling independent, he figured out how to create externally butted, seamless titanium tubing. The result was the Merlin Extralight, which for many years reigned as a benchmark in the road bike stratosphere. He also created the Merlin Newsboy, a bona fide mountain bike disguised as the most stylish of cruisers.

Easy to do, you say, if you have all the money in the world to work with. So at the opposite end of the price scale, he delivered the Merlin RSR and Taiga, affordable titanium bikes that were viable alternatives to a torrent of inexpensive aluminum frames that flooded the market in the mid-nineties.

But as much as his reputation was born of his work in titanium, Vandermark’s career has never been about metal. At heart, he is a design engineer, and industrial process is as important to him as bike performance. When his studies on manufacturing efficiency revealed a better way to build bikes, he left Merlin to create his own company and put his ideas into practice.

The result was Seven Cycles, a thriving bike company in Watertown, Massachusetts, which has turned the custom frame paradigm on its head. Seven specializes in custom work, and has perfected a way to deliver tailored frames in a matter of weeks, not months – this despite the complexity of the titanium, carbon fiber and steel materials the company works with.

It’s a market that, judging from Seven’s success, was vastly underestimated. Seven’s motto, “One bike: Yours” has resonated with a much larger pool of finicky, well-heeled customers than anyone could have predicted. Today, Seven churns out a huge range of road, mountain, cyclo-cross, triathlon, single-speed and tandem bikes. Nearly all of them are custom in the fullest sense. Geometry and sizing are individually determined, of course, but so too are tube diameters and wall thicknesses. It might be literally true that no two Sevens are identical, and yet the company manages to deliver most orders in 21 days.

Seven’s philosophy, materials mix and operating basis are unique in the bicycle industry, and lately the company’s profile has been elevated with the success of Olympic contender Mary McConneloug, who Seven has sponsored for a number of years. We talked with Rob Vandermark about how he put it all together.

VeloNews: What is the breakdown of your product mix?

Rob Vandermark: We’re 20 percent steel and 80 percent titanium or Ti/carbon mix. Ti/carbon is probably right around 15 percent of the total and growing, and I think it’ll continue to grow.

VN: So most of your production is full Ti frames?

RV: Yes, about 65 percent, I guess it is. It’s going really well, and our sales are growing 20 to 30 percent. It’s continuing to grow with the majority of our sales in the U.S., although now we’re starting to do more internationally, so I think for next year it will be a challenge to keep up. But yes, Ti is very strong for us. But I think [our growth] is more market share than growth in the Ti market.

VN: If Seven has grown even though the titanium bike market has not, where has the growth come from?

RV: I think the unusual thing about Seven is that because it’s all custom, that’s what is growing. The titanium in some ways is incidental – not entirely, but our situation is kind of artificial in terms of material because I think it’s the custom elements that we offer that have helped us grow, more than, “Oh, Seven’s a titanium brand, we need that in our store.” There’s certainly some of that, but I think the growth is that more and more people see custom as a reasonable, and achievable and not intimidating option. We’re trying to show that everyone should be on a custom bike, whether it’s Ti or carbon or steel or whatever.

When you say we’re a Ti business first, ten years from now that very well may not be the case, and maybe three years from now – who knows as the market changes, and what’s going on with carbon? It’s changing so fast, faster than any other material stuff that’s been going on. For Seven to remain viable and continue to do things with customization that other people aren’t doing and be at the forefront of that, materials do play a role.

VN: So the real key to Seven’s success is that you are primarily a custom builder, and the material is almost secondary?

RV: Yes, when a dealer or a customer thinks of Seven, the first word they think of may be “titanium,” or it may be “custom;” they’re both pretty high on the list. But we try not to have it be “Seven titanium.” I think tying solely to titanium can be a problem, as you can see with other companies. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why we did steel [frames] early on – not that we were doing a large volume, but we didn’t want people to see us as only a Ti brand. It’s one of the reasons why we started working with carbon seven years ago, early on working with carbon, Ti and steel to keep it in people’s minds that it’s not just ti. Although I know that because the percentage of Ti is so high that people would perceive us that way.

VN: You bring up an interesting point. You were the first company, at least in the U.S., to do a mix of carbon and titanium in a road frame.

RV: Yes, applying the carbon in the seatstays, or using carbon that way in a frame. The Specialized [Epic Ultimate] carbon/Ti [mountain] bikes came before that – we built those for Specialized at Merlin- but to use the concept of the carbon seatstays and fork as the bike’s suspension units and the titanium or steel being the chassis of the bike, that was apparently a strong enough proposition that it is now extremely common, so it’s kind of a cool sidebar to Seven’s history.

VN: And then over the years, the amount of carbon going into Seven’s frames has been increasing. So what is the request level from your customers for an all-carbon Seven?

RV: If they’re not thinking custom first, they’re thinking titanium first, so we’re not getting dealers saying “You need to do a full carbon bike.” When we introduced the Elium [road bike, with carbon main tubes and seatstays], there were some dealers who said, “What are you doing? It’s too different.” But now that they’ve ridden it, they say this makes sense, it’s a good use of the material. At this show, I don’t think we’ve had a single dealer say we need a full-carbon bike.

VN: It’s more a matter of you needing to lead them than their requests to you?

RV: Yes, it’s a tricky thing to say. But part of product development’s job is to figure out what the customer doesn’t know that they want or need. We have to listen to dealers and provide what they want, but we have to stay a few steps ahead, if possible – and not be off in some weird tangent. So having a full carbon bike, there’s a lot of logic to offering that to our dealers, and I never say never. And we’re pretty close – the Elium is not many steps away from a full carbon bike.

But the whole carbon market is in an interesting stage. There are a lot of carbon manufacturers and suppliers, and the bikes, the way they are fabricated, are all very different, and nobody really cares what technologies people are using – is it monocoque, or hand laid up or filament wound? – all that. It is going to be an interesting thing in a couple of years when we’ll see if it becomes important how the bike is made.

Two years ago, how do we butt tubes, and why don’t we use shaped tubes, and the contractile strain ratio of the grain of the titanium, all that stuff was really important. There was a hunger for that knowledge. In the past two years we’ve seen that just fall off. Nobody cares anymore, partly, I think, because the titanium bikes are durable no matter who’s making them. And with carbon, it’s so esthetics-driven right now, and people don’t have enough experience to know what’s going to hold up and what’s not. If it looks cool, that’s good enough – “That’s the bike I want.”

So that’s a really interesting thing to see in the next few years. Are people going to care how a bike’s made? And how will that then affect who is left in the carbon market? In some ways it’s like the Ti market. Ten years ago, everybody had a Ti bike, at least in their brochure, and that’s sort of – people have stopped doing that. I don’t see carbon being marginalized like that; it’s just too strong. People will figure it out, like aluminum. I mean, I hear people saying “carbon’s going to go away.” I don’t think that’s possible, I don’t see how that’s going to happen.

VN: Can you offer the same level of customization in a carbon bike as you do with your current line-up?

RV: With the carbon tubes and Ti lugs system, the way we’re doing welded lugs, absolutely. Even to the tube tailoring, and certainly to the geometry, no question. And with the new work we’re doing with MacLean [Composites, a carbon tube supplier] and the filament winding and the way we’re doing that, we’re getting a great variety of characteristics. But what’s interesting with the more classic carbon bike, the monocoque or the way that Trek does it, the OCLV style, it makes customization extremely limited or extremely expensive or causes very long lead times. So that’s a limiting factor.

With the current stuff that’s available, I know that Parlee and Calfee are doing custom work, but the process is still a production process that they’re squeezing into a custom system, which is really difficult to do. I mean, they’re doing it, but I’m certain it’s not much fun. I don’t want to speak for another manufacturer, but certainly not a lot of people are able to do that yet. And it’s similar to what we’re doing now; it’s using a lug that’s adjustable with a fixed tube. So if we were to take what we’re doing and expand it to full carbon tubes, titanium lugs would certainly make it fully customizable. But that’s an entirely different bike than, say, a carbon Orbea. It’s a totally different customer, it’s almost not a carbon-to-carbon comparison in a way.

VN: Changing the subject slightly, you had a great year this year with Mary McConneloug; will you continue that sponsorship next year?

RV: We are in talks with her and it’s our intention to work with her again. I think her goals will be different, because getting to the Olympics was her focus for the whole time that we’ve sponsored her. Now her goals are changing, and we’re working with her on how we participate in that. But it’s been an amazing relationship and she’s been the best ambassador we could hope for. So we definitely want to work with her and she wants to work with us.

Sponsorship in general is an interesting challenge, to figure out what is the return and to what extent is it worth it. A lot of the reason we do it is for industry participation. We are in this industry and we want to participate in all the facets of it, so sponsorship is part of that. And getting people out there and the exposure, not for Seven but to be able to support Mary to do good things and to bring something to cycling.

VN: Do you get much in the way of product development out of it?

RV: Yes, Mike [Broderick, McConneloug’s travel partner] has been great because he thinks about it quite a lot. When they’re traveling he’s the mechanic and [also] racing at a really high level, so that’s been helpful. It is really a good piece of the puzzle. And within the company there are so many people who ride hard and race, so even internally there are a lot of avenues for getting good product development.

cyclocrossworld.com: Interview with Mary McConneloug

Between nine months of mountain bike racing in Europe, an Olympic selection that ended up in court, and, finally, racing at the Athens Olympics in August, it’s been a busy year for Mary McConneloug. So it came as some surprise that the 33-year-old Californian decided to tackle this year’s Verge New England Cyclocross Series with all the gusto that has won her the past two series titles. But McConneloug has never been your typical bike racer.

After less than a month out of competition, but racing in the U.S. for the first time since last year’s Verge finale in New Hampshire, McConneloug won the series opener in Maine in dominant fashion. Cyclocrossworld caught up with the Seven Cycles rider following her win and asked why she’s spending her “off-season racing” ‘cross and how it works into her mountain bike career.

Cyclocrossworld: How hard is it getting used to racing a ‘cross event? Today’s race was only 35 minutes.

Mary McConneloug: It’s so different from mountain biking, it’s over like that. I think my fitness from the season is still up at the next notch. But I still need to train for ‘cross: shorter, harder stuff. I feel like I have the base from the mountain bike season.

CW: When did you start training for the ‘cross season?

MM: When I got back from Europe I spent two weeks just chilling out. Then I went for my first ‘cross ride right before Interbike, which was last week. I needed to feel what it was like to move with the bike and do transitions.

CW: Last year after the Northampton race you said you were done for the series, but then you came back and won the jersey.

MM: Well, the Rhode Island race got cancelled and that gave me the break I needed. It’s hard for me to sit still.

CW: How do you think racing ‘cross has helped you mountain biking?

MM: Bike handling skills for sure. It takes that to the next level. It’s really hard to control a ‘cross bike in the mud, it’s so different. Also, just to stay fit in the winter is good. Once you get out of shape it’s really hard to get it back.

CW: Are you considering ‘cross worlds this year?

MM: It’s too late in the season, I’ll be training for mountain bikes. But I am considering nationals. Last year I was so focused on getting ready for the big mountain bike season.

CW: Is nationals a race you’d like to win?

MM: I would, it would be a little dream come true again. We’ll see how it goes. We really need to focus on putting our team together again for next year. It’s a full-time job and this is the time of year to get it done. That takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of energy to come and race ‘cross every weekend. So we’re just going to take it as it comes. I’d like to do the whole Verge series, but the priority is to be set for next year.