Mudhoney PRO – Page 3

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.

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.

11 Races in 16 Days – Mo Bruno Roy’s CX Crusade

You will notice that we don’t sponsor a lot of riders. The idea that a company who makes good bikes should pay someone to say they are good somehow doesn’t make sense to us. When we have committed to a rider, it has always been because we think they deserve support and because they will give us good feedback on what we are doing. For those reasons, we have sponsored more women than men, and more local riders than distant pros. Our closest pro partnership of the last decade has been with current Single-Speed Cyclocross National Champion Mo Bruno Roy.

Here on the eve of her 39th birthday, we find ourselves admiring the way she enjoys her racing, stays competitive and gives back to the racing community by teaching clinics and giving pointers to amateur racers before big events. She’s the sort of cyclist we’re proud to work with, the kind of cyclist we all want to be.

This was supposed to be a more relaxed season for Mo. After winning the SSCX National Championship last year, a little less travel, a little more fun and a new focus on single speed races was on the docket. But the scheduling gods and a continuing drive to race her bike meant that, clustered around New England’s Holy Week of Cyclocross (GP Gloucester, Midnight Ride, Providence), she ended up doing 11 races in 16 days.

That’s a lot for an in demand massage therapist and yoga instructor, and it tells you everything you need to know about how much she loves what she does. She says of this latest bunch of events, “The level of competition has definitely been upped this season and the growth of women’s cyclocross is apparent as it is quickly becoming a sport for full-time professional athletes rather than the mixed bag of working-pros and full-timers that it has been in the past.”

Near the end of this intense period of racing, she reported “Providence weekend hosted three days of racing: single speed Friday and UCI races Saturday and Sunday. At this point my legs were pretty fatigued, but I was looking forward to the races and the opportunity to win the Golden Ticket for free entry to the Single Speed World Championships in Louisville, KY. The course was full of twists and turns and a few leg-sapping climbs, but I pushed the pace and headed into a steady lead in the single speed race, taking the win.”

Of course, we like to see sponsored riders winning races. It never hurts for people to see riders winning on our bikes, but for us there’s much more to it. The way someone like Mo conducts themselves, the way they make it look fun, the way they give back, those are the things that make us want to support racing and the people, like Mo, who dedicate themselves to going fast.

Mo Pro Ready to Go

No sooner was it here, than it was here!

Learning to Endure

Endurance riding is not a new segment. From the early days of cycling, riders have sought to challenge themselves by covering distances previously unimagined. But as a category within the broader cycling industry, endurance is now flourishing in a way it never has with the advent of longer, challenge-style events both on-road and off. After spending years working on rando bikes of every stripe, we are now seeing these bikes consolidate around the common experience of riders who are taking on events like Unbound Gravel, the Almanzo 100 and D2R2.

Welding Zip Tie Guides for Hydraulic Brakes

The Seven-sponsored Ride Studio Cafe Endurance Team is made up of three riders who, collectively and in massive solo efforts, will clock more miles on their Sevens this year than most folks will manage in their cars. We are deeply fortunate to be able to work with John Bayley, David Wilcox and Matt Roy. This season they will tackle Dirty Kanza, the Green Mountain Double Century, the Rapha Gentleman’s Race, the Vermont 600, D2R2 and a 1200k brevet of their own design. And events aside, almost every weekend will see these guys spending whole days in the saddle, knocking out century after century, saving up their endurance for big, fast miles on their custom Sevens.

Inset tapered fork and head tube on Rothar's frame — Over-sized Head Tube for John Bayley’s Axiom SL

We’ve built each of them a unique, custom, randonneuring bike suited to their personal style and approach to endurance cycling. Comfort and utility get more and more important as the miles pile into your legs and light wanes at the end of the day.

Endurance Team Captain Matt Roy, a Harvard trained immunologist, rides a 622 SLX, the most technically-advanced bike on the endurance circuit. We’ve taken some cues from Mo Bruno Roy’s – last name not coincidental – cyclocross winning Mudhoney PRO. Matt’s 622 is by far the lightest rando bike on gravel, while still boasting the lifetime durability Seven builds into every frame.

John Bayley values versatility. He is riding an Axiom SL that can run 650b or 700c wheels. His cabling is external for easy servicing and quick adaptation. We finished his bike this week, another speed build that went together in just three days from final design to full assembly thanks to a fair amount of overtime and a group of willing collaborators on the Seven shop floor.

Rothar's taillight prototype mount — Taillight Prototype

David Wilcox is a quiet, powerful rider, the kind of guy who can ride all day and all night without the whisper of a complaint. His bike is the most simple of the three, an Axiom S with no frills other than hydraulic disc brakes.

As co-sponsors, SRAM has provided the team with their new Force 22 hydraulic groups for each frame. Clement Tires has signed on as well. Working with cutting edge products makes projects like this one even more fun for us.

Pit-crewing Rothar's frame — The Seven Crew Knocking Out John’s Axiom SL Rando Special

The Endurance Team sponsorship allows us to explore and experiment in a new and interesting way because these guys will tell us, in the space of one ride, what we might take months of research to learn on our own. Endurance riding pushes bikes to their limits and tests the effectiveness of different component integration strategies. The needs of the long-distance rider also push us to design and integrate practical solutions into each build, the details, big and small, that make all the difference between success and failure.