Tag: Press

Text by Mark Jones, Photography by Roman Roth and Scott Hart

I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but in America, we like to root for the underdog. Take any sport and throw in some competition from an unlikely hero and an American crowd will cheer louder than ever. Such is the case with Mary McConneloug. Spectators have been going berserk over the lady in the green Seven Cycles’ jersey. You can’t help but love her cheerful tone and energized spirit. And then there is her racing. Without a huge factory sponsorship deal behind her, she won the third XC national at Mount Snow, worked her way to second place at the Pan American Games and finished as the top American in the overall National Championship points standings to earn herself the women’s title. Mary is truly living the —old school— mountain bike racer lifestyle, following the NORBA circuit in a van and trailer along with her Seven Cycles teammate and boyfriend, Mike Broderick, who ended up 11th in the national series. With great support from friends and family, they are making the best of what they have and enjoying every minute of it. Now, it seems like they have everyone else enjoying it, too.

What made you start racing mountain bikes?

When I graduated from college I got a bike. I would I just go out in my jean shorts, T-shirt and Converse high tops to cruise around Mount Tam. I didn’t get into competition until four or five years later. My boyfriend at the time thought that I would really like racing so I tried one and I was instantly hooked. I was living in Bend, Oregon, and that was in 1997. I was working full-time as a seamstress, training during the week and racing on the weekends. I loved it. A year later, I upgraded to pro because I was kind of dominating the Pacific Northwest scene. I was ready to try my luck. [then she cheerfully adds] I finished in the top thirty that first year, you know, just suffering. Over the past five years, I have sort of developed my own program and with the help of many friends and families who have been my number one sponsors to get me to this point. I have really come a long way, I think.

So no more day job?

It is just my bike. I realized that to be competitive at this level, I can’t divide my energy working another job. This is my job and it is full time. It is not just training. It is spending time preparing food, doing lots of laundry, stretching—I have incorporated Yoga into my program. I didn’t really do any stretching until this year. I kind of found it out of necessity. I was having back pain and just overall soreness so I got into Yoga and that takes dedication and time, for sure. Also, I like to sleep a lot, at least nine hours every night.

The Power of Two; Team Seven Cycles

Mike [Broderick] and I are partners in life. We developed this lifestyle of traveling around the country together and supporting each other. Then we got sponsored by Seven kind of as a package deal and we just have this fun lifestyle that we are super-psyched about that we are sharing. Hopefully, it will rub off on some people that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to have fun and that there are alternative lifestyles out there. We really feel like what we have going is pretty special. We like the freedom of choosing what races that we want to go to. We want to continue with this. We have a great sponsor base but we are looking to build it up a bit stronger because I would like to buy a house some day. [laughs] Actually, I’d like to get by. Well, we’re getting by, but it is tight, for sure. The main thing is being nice to each other and respecting each other and that means screening out thoughts sometimes [laughs]. I was brought up to be a nice person and now I have a perfect arena to practice in.

How long have you been doing this?

We have been doing this for about four years together. Pretty much since we met and it has just been better every year with more support from the industry.

Travelers: Mike + Mary

I met Mike in Fairfax in ’99. We met at a race and then two days later we met again. He was with someone that I knew and we had stopped to talk. I had just finished a mountain bike ride that morning and he was about to go out. I had mud on my face, you know. We all ended up having coffee together. We were attracted to each other at first sight and we exchanged numbers. Our first date, two days later, was a 60-mile road ride. It was so much fun. We hit it off instantly. The next week was the first National at Big Bear [California] and I was looking for a ride down and he was going so that was pretty much the beginning of our love affair. [laughs]

Home is Where the Van Is

I grew up in Fairfax, California, but I guess home is the van now. This fall we will be going back to the East Coast, so that will be my next home base on Martha’s Vineyard where Mike grew up. His family is really supportive with letting us stay there out back in our own little shack with electricity and no running water. [laughs] It isn’t insulated so we have to leave when it gets really cold and that is when we migrate west. We may go back to Marin or somewhere in Northern California for the winter to train.

Favorite Spote

There are a lot of little nooks and crannies. I really like it up on Vancouver Island in B.C. [Canada]. I liked Sandpoint [Idaho] a lot. I love Fairfax [California] and Hawaii in the winter. Actually, Martha’s Vineyard [Massachusetts] is amazing. It is really beautiful there and peaceful but I would never be able to afford a house there. We have a little shack to go to and it is good enough for me. I like Vermont. I like small towns. I don’t like big cities. I would like to live in the woods. Really, we look on the map for state parks where the little triangle tents show up and we find these random places. There are so many beautiful places across the United States. Anyone can travel like this. I like that we are traveling now. It is really sweet because I am not really ready to settle down. It is nice to see things from our van. It is just fun to travel. I love it. I wouldn’t say we’re modern-day hippies, just serious athletes following our dream, trying to do the best we can with what we have. We are lifestylists concerned about today, living in the moment…and trying to find that health food store.

Hotels

We never really check into a hotel. We have in the past when we were traveling in the Saab. In the middle of the winter, during cyclocross season, we got a hotel in Denver once. At this point since we have the van there is no need. Plus, we have friends and family on the road. We are super-grateful for all the people in our lives that help support us. We really couldn’t do it without them.

Roadside Dining

Mike and I cook all our own food on the road. It is a crucial part of our lifestyle—eating healthy and fueling up on good foods. We eat a lot of whole grains, organic if we can find it, which we usually can. We eat mostly vegetarian. We were, pretty much, all vegetarian up until this year when we started eating more meat. Like we’re thinking that we raced today, so we’re having steaks tonight. We like to go for the natural meat without antibiotics or hormones. We are conscientious about that. We stock up on organic food when we find it. We have gotten good at finding the natural foods stores when we roll into town. Actually, all you have to do is look them up in the phone book. It is pretty disappointing seeing the huge, nasty food chains all over the country and people packing up their carts with bad food. I hope more people can learn to care about what they put into their bodies.

Transportation

We have scrapped through some cars before we got this van. I used to drive a Volkswagen bus, which was our family heirloom. Mike had a little Toyota truck with a homemade 2-ton welded steel bed on the back that he and his dad built. That is what we first traveled in. Then after that we had a Saab, which was last year. We have several sob [laughs] stories. It barely got us through, but it did. We were packed to the hilt with five bikes in there and all of our camping gear. We are living in style in our big van now, especially with the trailer. I can’t believe it. We have AC and cruise control! We have moved up in the world this year. We put 20,000 miles on this thing since we got it in December. Mike tallied 20,400 miles as of yesterday.

Television

We don’t watch TV—ever. TV is crap, as far as I am concerned. Except for maybe ‘The Simpsons’. They’re good.

Vocal Performance

I was a voice major and I have studied music since I was fifteen. Then I went to study that in college. For a long time I was really into the opera and classical music. Once I picked up the mountain bike, I haven’t done much singing. Mike plays guitar and sometimes we just jam together. I have done more original stuff, improvisation and exploring with that. I haven’t really perfected anything because my main focus is the bike but we like to get down and dirty with the music [laughs]. It is usually around coffee in the morning or in the evening when I am cooking dinner, Mike will play guitar and I will chime in and sing if I feel inspired. But, I would say that there isn’t a lot of energy put into music. it is all pretty serendipitous.

Tunes For the Road

There are a lot of good college radio stations on the East Coast. Hip-hop, techno. I love reggae. I also like world beat and I still enjoy classical and jazz—pretty much everything but country.

Training

I train with Mike some of the time—quite a bit of the time, actually. I try to tag along on his wheel but I also train by myself like in the winter months, I just ride by myself mostly. We have a few places that we know on the road that we can ride but often times it is hit or miss. We pretty much look at the atlas and make it happen. We have specific objectives when we ride. We have a recovery day after a race and then I increase the intensity depending on our schedule. I usually clump together two or three days of workout and then I rest. When I pre-ride a course, I am usually mellow with a few short bursts to check myself. My hours are much less during the race season—about 8-10 hours a week.

Cyclocross

Cyclocross for me is for fun but it is not my focus. I love ‘cross because it is really fun and it’s nice to change it up in the winter. I use it to keep the fitness up and it has also taught me a lot about race strategies and timing. I love it. It is great, but I love cross-country racing even more. [laughs]

Mount Snow NORBA National

That was a big win for me. I surprised myself. I felt great that day and I just kind of knew that it was time to go when I saw Jimena miss-shift. I just had the legs that day. It was exciting. I had family members there and a lot of our sponsors were there, like Seven Cycles. It was an amazing day for me. I felt so proud and grateful. I know that I didn’t get there by myself. It was really cool with the crowd going wild. It sure was fun shaking that champagne everywhere.

New England sports fans don’t ask for much. Effort and some character are often enough to make them happy. And if their local teams or athletes are actually winning, New Englanders turn into a throng of partisan fiends—rabid devotees who will scream themselves hoarse to urge on their hometown teams. And best of all, their definition of local is extremely flexible.

Take the case of Mary McConneloug. She’s from California, but she rides for a New England-based bike company, Seven Cycles, and she spends part of the year at her boyfriend’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. Good enough to be a local favorite.

With those New England credentials, McConneloug didn’t need to do much else to earn loud cheers at Mount Snow, but she did. The 32-year-old former seamstress won the third stop of the NORBA National Championships Series, June 21, at Mount Snow, Vermont, dropping three-time world champion Alison Sydor (Trek-Volkswagen) on the final climb of the final lap.

Roland Green lacks local cred—he’s a Canadian West Coaster and rides for a Wisconsin-based team—but he made up for it with his rainbow jersey. The world champion’s stripes never fail to draw cheers, and with most spectators aware that Green had been recovering from a bad crash in the Tour de Georgia, the Trek-Volkswagen rider was showered with support as he worked with countryman Seamus McGrath (Haro-Lee Dungarees) to establish the race-winning move in the men’s cross-country.

Something About Mary

McConneloug is not your typical pro bike racer. She rides for a small, two-person team. She attributes her improved racing to a 30-minute daily yoga routine. She doesn’t train with a heart-rate monitor. And yet, despite flying in the face of convention, McConneloug has become one of the most consistent finishers on the NORBA circuit the past two years.

Consistent, yes. But spectacular? She’d been on the podium before, but never won a NORBA race.

At the start of the pro women’s cross-country it looked like Jimena Florit (RLX-Ralph Lauren) was on track to win back-to-back NORBA nationals. Feeling flush with the form that brought her a win the week before in West Virginia, Florit went straight to the front on the first lap of the three-lap race. The lithe 31-year-old Argentinean opened a healthy gap on Sydor (Trek-Volkswagen), McConneloug, Willow Koerber (RLX-Ralph Lauren) and Chrissy Redden (Subaru-Gary Fisher) by the end of lap one, but admitted that she overestimated the pace she could keep on a course with grueling climbs and technical descents.

“You have to keep some strength for the descent,” said Florit “I knew I couldn’t keep that pace, so I slowed down on the second lap. The descent had a good amount of pedaling so you really had to think of your gearing. One mistake in the gearing and you lose momentum and then you’re off your bike and losing time.”

As Florit’s pace eased, Sydor, Koerber and McConneloug bridged the remaining gap. Then Sydor and McConneloug set out on their own on the second lap’s main climb. The leading duo came through and received the bell for the final lap in tandem, but Sydor clawed out a narrow gap on the third lap’s opening wooded section. Undaunted, McConneloug chased and caught the Canadian by the base of the main technical climb, where she launched her counterattack.

“I got 10 or 15 seconds on the last climb and then didn’t make any mistakes on the downhill,” said McConneloug. “I got that gap and then told myself to ride it smooth.”

Sydor admitted that her efforts from winning the previous weekend’s Pan American Mountain Bike Championship in Colombia had left her tank empty when it mattered most.

“I had the lead, but I’m feeling a little tired today,” said Sydor. “Last weekend was very hard and then I had a lot of travel.”

Florit also passed Sydor on the last climb. While Koerber finished fourth, a best-ever result for the 26-year-old North Carolina rider. “Having Mary up there was inspiring to me, too,” said Koerber. “It’s just so cool to see new people up there.”

“I knew the course suited me really well and I felt great today,” said McConneloug. “When I went to West Virginia I felt a little rusty on my East Coast technical skills, so that kind of threw me off. But pre-riding before this race I went to check the course out. I just took one lap, and I just loved it. This makes me realize that I can be up there, too. This shows me that I can do it.”

by Paul Clarke

Most casual bicyclists don’t spend much time thinking about the shape of the tube on their bike frame, or the type of metal used in its construction. But then, most casual riders aren’t like Mary McConneloug, a professional off-road cyclist and member of the 2002 national U.S. cycling team. For competitive riders such as McConneloug, the frame is of paramount importance, playing a vital role in the bike’s speed, control and overall performance.

When this level of quality is needed, many riders turn to Seven Cycles (617-923-7774; www.sevencycles.com), a Watertown, Massachusetts-based company that is among the largest custom bicycle-frame manufacturers in the world. Seven Cycles, which sponsors McConneloug in her competitions, has achieved this level of success by pursuing a single goal: to create the best possible bike frame for each of its customers.

To accomplish this goal, the company pays close attention to the rider’s needs when crafting a custom frame. Customers provide answers to more than 100 questions about their body measurements, riding styles and preferences, and Seven Cycles supplements these details with information gleaned from interviews.

With this data in hand, a frame is designed and built in the company’s 12,000-square-foot manufacturing plant, where machinists and welders select and custom fit titanium tubes (or steel tubes, for about 20 percent of the frames) to meet the precise specifications for each rider. Each team of machinists, welder~ and finishers works exclusively on one frame from start to finish before moving on to the next.

Seven Cycles’ frames start at around $1,500 and range up to $6,000. To build a complete bike, additional parts—such as the seat and handlebars—must be purchased independently, from other dealers. The typical cost of a bike using a Seven Cycles frame is between $2,800 and $7,400.

The frames have inspired plaudit from avid cyclists, and the company has grown rapidly. Founded in 1997 by renowned bicycle designer Rob Vandermark, Seven Cycles now employs 32 people, and markets its bikes through more than 180 authorized dealers in the United States and 14 distributors worldwide. Seven Cycles has built 8,000 frames to date, and has posted profits every year since its second year of operation.

Not surprisingly; the company has won wide acclaim for its bikes. In 2001, Outside magazine named Seven Cycles’ Odonata model the best road bike in the world, and in 1999 Mountain Bike magazine announced it had found the perfect bike at Seven Cycles.

The Company currently manufactures 22 models of frames, ranging from the Axiom, a steel road-bike frame priced at $1,495, to the Sola 007 Tandem, a titanium mountain-bike frame priced at $6,000. The price is not modest, but as many passionate cyclist can attest, the perfect ride is worth every penny.