Mo Bruno Roy – Page 2

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.

Mo Bruno Roy – Single Speed CX National Champ AGAIN

We don’t like it when a big win, say a National Championship, gets billed as a title “defense” just because the rider won last year, too. Defense has negative connotations for us, whereas, winning a bike race, especially on a technical, cyclocross course is about attacking every corner, every rise, about riding your own race, rather than playing defense.

Here’s a great interview with two-time Single-Speed Cyclocross National champion Mo Bruno Roy, done by Cyclocross Magazine, just after the finish where she explains how she did it.

Check back next week, when we’ll have some pictures and an exclusive interview with Mo about her exploits in Austin.

Mo Bruno Roy’s Mudhoney PRO

Mo Bruno Roy has won a lot of races on our bikes, including this year’s Single Speed Cyclocross World Championship. She makes us look good, and for this we are enormously grateful. This season, in addition to standing on podiums, she also got her Mudhoney PRO (affectionately known as Mo Pro II) all kinds of cool coverage, some of which we share with you here:

There was a cool write up and photo gallery in Cyclocross Magazine.

Another gallery in Velo News that documented the design, build and race process for the bike.

Behind the Scenes with MM Racing

By now, you know Matt and Mo as two of our favorite sponsored-riders. We have written about their exploits recently here and here. What you might not know about Matt and Mo is that together, under the banner of MM Racing, they are two of the savviest riders/racers in the game.

Matt explains, “MM Racing is really about being our own title sponsor, our own sports marketing company. In 2008, when we teamed up with Seven Cycles and secured product sponsorship for bikes and clothing, we still found ourselves without a title sponsor. At that time, we realized that we were actually our own financial “sponsors” and created our own team name using our first initials. For the next two years, MM Racing served as a place holder or “Your Name Here” for potential title sponsors. In 2010, Bob’s Red Mill filled that spot for us. We remain our own team managers and organizers, now using the moniker MM Racing as more of our sports marketing vehicle via social media, website and e-newsletters.”

“As privateers, we do all of our own marketing,” he explains. “I think a lot of athletes at the elite level just want to focus on training and racing, and we get that, but if you’re not packaging and marketing what you do, it can be hard for sponsors to justify supporting an athlete. Historically, we pay attention to marketing trends and changing the way we approach potential sponsors year-to-year based on current trends and things like laying out ROI for our sponsors. We understand that sponsorship works on two levels. On the one hand, and most importantly, you have a relationship as people. You essentially become teammates with your sponsors, and then at the same time, it’s a professional business relationship, and both aspects have to work for the sponsorship to be successful.”

Mo says, “We have never approached companies for sponsorship we don’t personally appreciate in some way and believe in. The real benefit to our approach is that we get to develop genuine relationships that are part teammate, part professional business. Some athletes may be comfortable with anonymous sums of money from a sponsor, but that’s not what we’re about. We want to be part of a team and show off our teammates. Our approach is akin to our lifestyle. We don’t need a lot, we’re not interested in getting lots of “stuff” for free, we want to be connected to what our sponsors do and who they are on a personal level.”

Both Matt and Mo worked in pro-cycling, Mo as a soigneur and Matt as a mechanic, before getting together, so they both knew what it took to run a tight ship, but all the work of running the team can be a big stress point in their relationship.

Mo says, “We both put so much time, energy and effort into all aspects of our team and our races that when it doesn’t go well for one of us, it doesn’t go well for both of us.”

MM Racing divides their season in interesting ways, too. August through February is Mo time, with cyclocross and mountain bike races dominating their days. March through September is Matt’s time to reel off randonneuring events and other long, meditative struggles against time and distance.

They are in a unique position of being life partners, teammates and running a sports marketing company together. During Mo’s cyclocross season and Matt’s summer Ultra Endurance season, their tasks read like a list of resume qualifications. Matt’s job includes Team Mechanic + Manager, Logistics Coordinator, Social Media/Newsletter/Website Designer + Curator, ultra endurance cyclist. Mo’s jobs include Sponsorship and Marketing liaison, Social Media + Newsletter Content Writer, Soigneur, cyclocross racer.

Mo says, “We work very differently at most tasks and our approach to training and racing but I think our strengths and weaknesses are complimentary. I admittedly can’t multitask very well and that is Matt’s specialty. Matt can juggle five balls and pick up three more without ever dropping one while remaining objective, linear and analytical. It’s essential to managing the mayhem that can come his way during a muddy cyclocross race or unplanned bumps in our travel plans.I can get a little wishy washy in the emotions of things and can do that fake juggling with only two balls. When it comes to my cyclocross racing, I often need time to process the emotions of the day (both good and bad) before I can objectively talk about or analyze a race. Matt can stay the course and compartmentalize tasks and emotions when needed to always be 100% on the job. However, when I am a soigneur my emotional empathy or intuition can end up being the difference between checking things off a list to make sure riders have what they need or just knowing that the thing that might boost their spirits at mile 120 in a 50º downpour is a surprise egg and cheese sandwich.”

Matt adds, “When it comes down to it, we’re really lucky we get to do all of this together.”

Being World Champion – Mo Bruno Roy Interview

Seven-sponsored rider and good friend Mo Bruno Roy won the Single-Speed Cyclocross World Championship in Louisville on October 25th. We wrote about it first here. We had Mo and her MM Racing teammate/husband Matt Roy in the other day to talk about the race, where she is in her career, and what she wants out of riding her bike. This is what she said:

Seven: Did you believe you could win this race going in?

MBR: I was hoping I could. I was planning to, but I didn’t realize what it would take. Single-speed racing is full of shenanigans. People hand you bourbon shots and beers while you ride, and you can take shortcuts based on your willingness to engage in the fun. At Worlds you could skip the flyover if you chugged a beer. If you were willing to throw your bike over a four foot wall and climb over after, then you could avoid running through the sand pit.

At the start this year, none of us had shoes on. We had to slide down this giant slip n’ slide and then get on the bike and start racing.

Having said all that, I raced full gas the whole time, because honestly I didn’t know what was happening. There were racers everywhere, people I knew hadn’t passed me ended up in front of me. Maybe they cut the course. Maybe they found some other way. I took the hole shot at the beginning, and Matt says I had 30 seconds at that point, but then there were all these women in front of me. My plan had been to race hard the first two laps, and then relax and have some fun, but when I realized I wasn’t in front I went 100% to the line.

Matt: Don’t forget the feats of strength the day before. The whole thing starts the day before the race. They broke everybody up into groups of 15 led by a “colonel” who took the racers all over Louisville to stuff like a 100 meter cross course, a mass start hill climb on which you could score extra points by stopping to pick up a rubber chicken. There were trivia questions. All of it scored points to qualify for the race. It was just a big bunch of strangers roving the city in search of fun.

Seven: So it’s a whacky event. How does that make you feel about being World Champion?

MBR: The thing that is so attractive to me about Single-Speed Worlds is that there are very few rules. Ride a single-speed. Wear a costume. Don’t be a jerk. It’s just chaos, a bunch of really nice people having fun on bikes. I have taken racing seriously for a long time, and I needed to remember what it was like to have this much fun, so yes, I am totally proud of being World Champion. It also makes you appreciate the rules that govern the other elite races, that give those races structure. We complain about those a lot, but you can see what craziness takes over without that structure. I happen to be at a point in my career when I’m ready for some more craziness, so this is great for me, but I understand other people want to take it seriously. Honestly, this very well might be the highlight of my career.

Seven: This was all part of “taking it easy for the season,” but most people don’t associate World Championships, albeit whacky ones, with taking it easy. What is it you have really been trying to achieve in 2014?

MBR: World Cup racing is super hard work. You have to plan your whole life around it. There is so much expectation involved, and that ratchets down the fun level, or it changes it. You have fun, but it’s fun after you’ve finished, not right away. Sometimes it’s a long time after. So taking it easy, for me, means having fun WHILE I’m racing, actually enjoying each event, and single-speed races retain a part of the older spirit of cyclocross when events were weirder, and we were all less focused on results.

I think we need more of that spirit, and less of this sense that every race has to be pure and exclusive and elite. I have maybe been naive up until now, in thinking that bike racing was for everyone. Within the larger bike racing community we are more exclusive than I thought we were. So planning my season, I wanted to get back to a more open-minded approach to racing. I don’t think wealth should be a limiter, and that’s easy for me to say as a sponsored rider, but whether you show up on a mountain bike or need to zip tie your shifters to qualify for the single-speed race or whatever, we have to share this with as many people as we can. Honestly, if someone had suggested bike racing to me when I was a kid, there just wouldn’t have been any way, because we didn’t have any money, but cycling is really a community activity. We need to be drawing everyone into what we’re doing, and I don’t think there is any better way to do that than by making it fun, keeping it fun, and having that be our priority.

This isn’t some crusade for me to save bike racing. I’m just one person, but just like I ride a bike to work and to run errands, I can only try to be an example. As you get older, living your principles seems to become more and more important, so I’m happy with where I am and what I’m doing, and I hope it helps the communities that I live in, and either way I’m having fun, so it’s a win.