Tag: Press

Diary Entry from Team Kenda-Seven’s Intrepid Pro Racers, Mary McConneloug and Mike Broderick

Mary and I made it down to Chile, and as soon as we got off our red-eye flight, jumped in our tiny box van and made our way west through the sign-less maze of Santiago. We felt justified for all the energy and effort we put into setting up this trip. There are a lot of places we could be at this time of year and several places we wanted to be. To make things more confusing, we had been struggling a bit in deciding whether or not we were going to spend our fall racing cyclo-cross, mountain bikes or perhaps take a seasonal break. Once we stopped overanalyzing things and decided to follow our instincts and passion to simply (or not so simply) continue on as traveling mountain bike racers, everything seemed to fall into place.

Something about Chile struck a sweet chord with us and this long skinny country was still on our minds from our initial visit earlier this year. The fact that there was the potential for bettering the USA’s national ranking by competing in Chile’s late season UCI races, and effectively increasing the number of Olympic spots for cross-country mountain biking from 2 to 3 on the men’s side, definitely played a role in our deciding to return. On one hand, our trip could keep the door open for a personal dream to become a reality, but I think that it was as much the excuse that we needed to book the tickets for another epic journey.

Planning a six-week trip anywhere takes some serious effort. In this case, a six-week trip that includes three mountain bike races and a whole lot of training rides takes a lot of foresight, logistical planning and careful equipment selection. It was helpful that the race bags were still half packed from our last trip to World Championships and World Cup finals; but I knew that it was going to be critical to bring absolutely all the necessities and lots of back up gear since, Chile does not have the type of equipment stocked at most of it’s bike shops that can help us keep our race bikes in top form. In the type of town we prefer to travel in Chile, you are likely to come across a killer empanada, beautiful handmade pottery, top notch pisco sour and quite possibly a decent surfboard; however, a spare carbon riser bar and fresh race rubber is something better brought from home.

Mary and I have been getting some long looks as we rip around the dusty back roads searching out training rides through the less traveled sleepy towns in central Chile. For the most part people seem very interested and on occasion seem a bit shocked at the look of the helmet-clad gringos in matching spandex kits; but most seem to harbor little if any animosity as we pass on by. At first Mary was a bit uneasy about the constant whistles of the men, old and young, since she has not spent a lot of time around construction work sites in the U.S. But really it seems to be harmless and is certainly a compliment. We have come to feel as safe here as you can feel when riding your bike on the side of the road anywhere.

Central Chile is a beautiful and exciting place to ride. From the dry coastal mountains to the eternally snow capped Andes, there are miles and miles of uncrowded winding steep and narrow back roads. We really don’t feel that out of place, since bikes are everywhere. In many towns they are the chief form of transportation and are commonly utilized for everything from vending to construction. Most towns big enough to have a gas pump have a solid bike shop, always busy and in great demand. We have made the point to visit several and there is no doubt that there are some skilled bike mechanics; though their specialties lean more toward welding cracked frames than servicing suspension forks. I have managed to learn a few things with regard to getting by with what you have. I’m sure everyone can appreciate the convenience and light environmental impact of utilizing olive oil for chain lube, not to mention its effectiveness.

Mary’s Spanish-speaking skill has been more than getting us by; the holes in her vocabulary easily being filled with a determination and willingness to hang in there use some hand signs and laugh until the point has gotten across. And this is lucky since I am just getting to the point where I can utter a “hola” without thinking about it first.

We are planning on competing in three races in our six weeks here and we are looking forward to taking our time in between to see, ride, surf and experience all we can. The first race is this weekend and I’m sure it will be an interesting one since it is being held within Chile’s second largest city, Conception. Two weeks later we will compete again outside of Vina del Mar and for the final race of the season we will drive south to beautiful Pucon. This schedule will allow us the opportunity to travel through and stay at some of the sweetest gems that Chile has to offer up for people like us. Our focus will be on the coastal towns that have shown to serve up an endless supply of training options on quiet dirt roads, and on the surfing side, some macking cold water left-hand point breaks.

We are currently staying in the village of Pichilemu, known world-wide in the surfing community for its epic big left point break, Punta Lobos. As far as the surfing we have not been disappointed. And we have been equally happy with the quality of training rides available in the surrounding hills; they remind us so much of the coastal range near Mary’s home in northern California. Not much single track yet, but lots of potential, and in the meantime, plenty of dusty Chilean back roads for training on the mountain bike.

Mary and I lucked into meeting a local gringo surf shop owner named Matt who with his Chilean wife and family has made Pichilemu home for the past 10 years. Matt manages some of the most incredible bungalows in town, within spitting distance of two premier point breaks. (For info email him at: punaniinternational@hotmail.com) He has turned out to be an incredible host, sharing his boards by day and local culinary delights by night. This connection has put us on the right track for how to enjoy this beautiful place and has deepened our love for this area ensuring that we will be returning for more than just to pick up our bike bags pack up and go.

Que te vaya bien!

Mike and Mary

Note: Shortly after receiving this update from Mike and Mary, Chile was struck by a massive earthquake. Fortunately, Mike and Mary were well out of harms way. However, many others were not as fortunately. Seven’s thoughts and prayers go out to those who have suffered from this tragedy.

As the sole woman selected to the U.S. team, Kenda-Seven’s Mary McConneloug joined Todd Wells and Adam Craig to represent the United States at the 15th edition of the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 14, 2007.

McConneloug repeated her silver medal performance from four years ago despite suffering two mechanicals. Mary had a great duel with eventual winner, Catherine Pendrel of Canada. On the final lap both riders came together, but it was Pendrel who managed to break away, finishing just over a minute ahead of McConneloug. Mexico’s Laura Morfin rode in about three minutes later for the final spot on the podium.

“I did not have a perfect race due to several mechanical problems, but my body felt great and my head was into it,” McConneloug remarked later. “I am happy to have taken home the silver, but it makes me hungry for more. I had great support here and it is an honor to line up against all of these top women.”

McConneloug’s silver medal along with Adam Craig’s gold medal performance will play a significant role in keeping the U.S. near the top of international rankings, a primary factor in determining the number of start positions it receives at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing next summer. Going into today’s contests, the U.S. was ranked sixth in the world in men’s mountain biking behind France, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium and Canada; and first in the world in women’s mountain biking.

by Roberta Holland, Journal Staff

On a chilly Spring afternoon Rob Vandermark, the founder and president of Watertown, Massachusetts-based Seven Cycles settles into his office. He opened a manila folder on his desk, which is also home to a couple of BlackBerrys and a business management tome called The Fifth Discipline. Adjusting the glasses on his pale face, Vandermark Studies some figure-filled paperwork, as if he were a nerdy researcher and not, in fact, the driving force behind one of the world’s top custom-bike companies.

Truth is, he’s both.

The folder contains a profile of one of Seven’s newest customers: a 56-year-old road rider who’s dissatisfied with his current, pedigreed Italian bicycle. He’s come to Vandermark hoping that Seven can work its magic and outfit him with two-wheel sublimity.

“There’s hand numbness and upper-back pain,” says Vandermark, 40, in a deep, measured voice. “Subjectively, I’d say make him a little more upright. a little more comfortable.” Then he chooses one of a dozen black binders resting on a bookshelf and flips it open to a document titled “Theory Behind Seven System for Determining Differential.”

“Now;” he adds, “how do we objectify this guy’s needs into math?”

Binders? Differential? Math? Exactly what kind of machine comes out of this place?

Vandermark and his 40-person company don’t build bicycles so much as craft precision instruments. Unlike most of the bikes manufactured by fabled boutique brands like Moots and Serotta, virtually every Seven is custom-built. Choosing among the company’s 30-plus road, mountain, cyclocross, and touring frames—nearly all of which come in high-end materials like titanium and carbon fiber—only kicks off a painstaking process. Two months after a customer orders his bike from an authorized Seven retailer, the finished product gets shipped from the company’s headquarters to the local shop, where wheels and components are installed. Average final price tag: $8,000.

“The people at Seven are perfectionists, and that’s not even a good enough word:’ says Ashley Korenblat, who worked with Vandermark at the high-end-bike maker Merlin and is now president of Western Spirit, a Moab, Utah-based bike-touring company. “Think obsessed, but with no negative connotations.”

Owners of Seven bikes, meanwhile, often sound like they’ve found God, and he’s apparently made of titanium. “After long rides, I used to have back problems. But with my Seven, it’s like I’m not even riding:’ says Brad Yoder a 45~year-old computer programmer and triathlete from Charlottesville, Virginia. “It’s as comfortable as a lounge chair.”

Vandermark’s preoccupation with building custom bikes began in the early 1990s. As an amateur racer and formal)y trained sculptor, he believed there was potential in providing discriminating cyclists with a tailored bike that was also a piece of art. “I realized that it was easy to design a bike that was really neat and rode well.”

Vandermark told me. “But could I really make one?” Vandermark didn’t want to live the life of the typical frame-building artisan, who gets sucked into the romance of fabricating elegant machinery and then suffers the hand-to-mouth reality of being a one-man show. So he obsessed over production processes, reading books on how companies like Toyota streamlined their manufacturing. In 1997, when Vandermark launched his company—which was named for the lucky number seven—he codified fit and construction methods that employees could learn. While many boutique frame builders will notch measly double-digit production runs, Vandermark’s $5 million company expects to produce 2,700 custom frames this year.

The odyssey of buying a Seven starts by plunging into a 12-page order form. Among its 108 questions, the workbook asks for multiple body measurements, whether you’re a “gear masher” or a “spinner;’ and how you would rate your current bike’s “drivetrain rigidity.” Once the form is complete, a fit specialist conducts an extensive pre-production, fork-to-finish phone interview—a process applied to all customers, whether they’re from North America or Australia. The data is plugged into seven’s sizing database, which generates a spreadsheet that will correspond with a frame design. Then Vandermark steps in, making sure, for instance, that they’ve specified frame tubes appropriate for a five-foot-eight, 130-pound male triathlete, which could be very different from the tubes that go into a frame for a five-foot-eight,130-pound male touring cyclist. “Every detail has an effect.” says Vandermark. “If we designed a bike for a man and then realized it’s really for a woman? We’d have to start from scratch.”

The final touches complete, the order goes back to the customer for approval. A computer then turns the data into a frame blueprint, which is sent to the Seven folks responsible for converting the paper bike Into a lusty ride.

A sign next to a side-entrance door at Seven’s humble, 15,OOO-square-foot facility reads, R1NG IF YOU’VE GOT DONUTS. One morning, Seven marketing chief Jennifer Miller and I come armed. The sticky-sweet breakfast, which is a tradition for Seven’s 24-person manufacturing staff, commences.

“Ohhh, the good ones!” says a guy wearing smudged safety glasses, grabbing a dough-nut dusted with chocolate sprinkles.

Amid the racket of metal being cut and welded, I’m led to one end of the shop, where a machinist starts the frame-building process by selecting tubing. Unlike other bike brands, Seven sources its titanium exclusively from U.S.-based mills, which have the highest fabrication standards in the world. A lot of Seven’s carbon-fiber tubing is “filament-wound”—another way of saying precision-made by computer-controlled machinery.

“There are no voids, and the compaction and ratio of epoxy to carbon from a tube six months ago and a tube today is identical,” Vandermark later explains, lapsing into geekspeak. “It’s predictable, repeatable, and durable.”

Instead of performing just one menial task, a technician in each of the company’s three manufacturing departments—machining, welding, and finishing—is responsible for seeing one frame all the way through to the next production stage. The machinist I’m watching, for example, must fabricate every tube for a Seven titanium frame. Farther down the line, I meet a welder named Skunk. He’s 37, shaggy-haired, heavily tattooed, and wears combat boots that are four sizes too big. But Skunk’s organized workspace reveals the methodical dweeb within. He even made the folding workbench that helps him better maneuver around his work.

A Seven welder can take four hours to assemble a single frame. You see the difference when you examine Skunk’s handiwork. “Look at that head tube!” he says while hovering over an Aerios road frame. “Welds like a stack of dimes!”

If the customer has ordered a Seven fork, it gets plugged with one of 12 different sets of dropouts, or aluminum fittings that hold the front wheel at a precise angle to the ground. Vandermark believes that changing out such bits can transform the way a bike handles.

Finally, the frame enters Seven’s finishing area. At one end, a burly guy with a ripped T-shirt furiously polishes a mountain-bike frame. Close by, a woman applies decals. And outside of two silvery paint booths is a rack holding frames with custom fade and “lucky-seven dice” paint jobs. Customers have also requested smiley faces, flames, multiple shades of green—you name it.

“One guy wanted a starry-night scheme with the moon,” a technician tells me. “On tubes. You have to rein them in!’

In the end, a Seven frame is finished only after it passes a 150-point inspection. “There’s a tiny bit of discoloration on the back of that cable stop,” says quality-control worker Tom Gawlick while poring over a Vacanza touring frame. “That’ll have to come out!”

You’d think Vandermark would be satisfied when the UPS man comes to pick up another batch of frames. But a perfectionist can never rest. His latest creation—the Diamas, a wildly tapered road frame that he claims is the world’s most customizable carbon-fiber bike—is running a year behind schedule, and orders are stacking up. When I ask Vandermark what’s causing the delay, he sheepishly confesses. “It’s me,” he says. “I’m the hurtle.”

Seven owners should only rejoice in such obsessive-compulsive pain.

Team Kenda-Seven XC pros Mary McConneloug and Mike Broderick enjoyed a brief respite from travel and racing this weekend during a stop at Mike’s family’s home on Martha’s Vineyard. After more than three months and three World Cup rounds, Mike and Mary welcomed the short break, during which they took a few moments to celebrate the recent announcement that Mary has been selected for the sole woman’s spot to represent the U.S. at the upcoming Pan Am Games in Brazil.

McConneloug and Broderick are now heading north to Mount Saint Anne, Quebec, Canada for round 4 of the World Cup this coming weekend. Stay tuned for results and full race report.