Mo Bruno Roy – Seven Cycles

Guaranteed Adventure

Here we are with Joe Cruz (the one in the blazer), the night he picked up his new Treeline SL from the shop. A philosophy professor during daylight hours, at all other times of year Joe is compulsive traveler and a committed back country cyclist. We wrapped this bike Tuesday night, and tomorrow Joe leaves for Alaska, where he’ll swap over to studded tires for a week of glacier exploration outside of Anchorage.

Joe Cruz poses with his new Treeline SL and the team at Seven

We count ourselves lucky to be able to work with riders like Joe and Jeff Curtes and Daniel Sharp and Matt and Mo Bruno Roy, and of course countless others who use our bikes to find and share big adventures.

As kids, we remember pedaling away from home, disappearing for hours at a time, going wherever our wheels would take us, and the chance to recapture that sense of exploration and adventure now is really priceless.

Watch this space for more from Joe as well as the rest of Seven’s sponsored, encouraged, and inspired riders. The adventure is guaranteed.

The Cycling Media Reacts to Mo Bruno Roy’s Retirement

It’s been a happy/sad week for Mo Bruno Roy, since she announced her retirement from Elite Cyclocross racing. New beginnings are like that. It’s a testament to all the things we said about her just a few days ago, that the cycling press has covered her retirement in a way they don’t usually mention other riders moving on.

There were kind words on VeloNews, a nice interview on Bicycling, and a photo series on The Radavist, showcasing Mo’s Mudhoney PRO race bike, all-in-all the nicest way to sign off from elite racing that we can imagine.

Stay-tuned for our own interview with Mo, and don’t think you’ll stop seeing her on her Seven or in these digital pages. She’s not racing elites next season, but, in literal terms, she can’t stop/won’t stop.

Into the Sunset – Mo Bruno Roy Retires

Our good friend and sponsored rider Mo Bruno Roy announced her retirement from pro racing yesterday after 12 years at the top. We think it’s best for you to hear it in her words, but we would be remiss if we didn’t point out the highlights of our time together as builder and rider.

Mo raced over 200 races on a Seven, including 31 wins, 63 podiums and 158 top-tens.

Of those, 143 were UCI races and included 5 wins, 31 podiums and 111 top-tens.

She raced 13 World Cups, 10 National Championships, including 3 wins (1 Masters, 2 Single Speed) and 6 top-ten Elite finishes (out of seven Elite races).

She was Single Speed CX World Champion, 2014, Cyclocross World Championships team member, Tabor, CZE 2010 and Winner of the 2009 USA Cycling National Calendar.

In all that time, she turned in one DNF (Did Not Finish).

BUT….those are just results. Sure, they’re important. At the pro/elite level, you race to win, and Mo won a lot. For us, there is much, much more to it than just winning, though. Mo is an ambassador of the bike. She brings people into our sport. She epitomizes what we think of as a pro cyclist, not just for the way she rides on race days, but by the way she rides her bike to work, to the grocery store, and to visit us here at the shop. And she does it all with a smile on her face. THAT is why we are proud of her, and proud of our partnership, because it’s more than a sponsorship.

Maybe sponsorship is what happens on race days, and partnership is what happens every other day of the year. Mo’s “career” as a pro racer might be over, but she will go on being a great cyclist for a long, long time, and that’s why we wanted to work with her in the first place.

We congratulate her on everything she packed into that career and wish her the very best for every mile to come.

Geaux Meaux!

Here are just a few of our favorite shots of Mo from over the years:

Photo by Brad Jurga

Photo by Chris Milliman Photo by Dave Chiu At Grand Prix of Gloucester (photo by Jon Henig)

Matt and Mo Bruno Roy’s MMRacing Season Wrap

Matt and Mo do a great job of documenting the fun they have on the race course and on the road, and they’ve just posted their 2014/15 Cyclocross Season Wrap Up.

Here is a quick excerpt:

Wednesday was race day #1 and I was feeling ready to go in a competitive field. The number of single speed women had doubled from the year before and as the defending champion, I was going to have a hard race on my hands.

Bounce over to MMRacing and read it all.

The Specific Woman

Who is the specific woman? We see a lot of “women’s specific” bikes out in the world, but we have yet to meet any specific women. In all the fittings and all the designs we have done, what is resoundingly clear is that women’s bodies are pretty non-specific. In fact, women’s bodies vary more than men’s do, in proportion, so it’s a hard task to design something that will fit most women, even of the same height, in any more than a cursory way. Making a man’s bike smaller doesn’t get at the half of it.

So we consider what makes women different than men. For example, women generally (but not always) have a wider pelvic arch than men, greater pelvic tilt also. These things affect saddle position and saddle height. Generally speaking (but not always) women have longer legs relative to their height than men do. Their weight is lower and farther back, which affects the center of gravity, handling and reach. Their shoulders are usually (but not always) narrower, and they have smaller hands (sometimes), all of which impacts front-end geometry and handling.

The generalized differences are informative, but really, when it comes right down to it, every rider, male or female, is an individual, with specific geometric needs, with a tubeset that matches their riding preferences, with their own aesthetic sense and ideas for their bike. That’s why we make rider-specific bikes.

As far as we can tell, there is no specific woman, but there might be a specific bike for every woman (or man), who wants one.