Twelve years, 300 races, five national podiums and 41 wins. Mo Bruno Roy has had one hell of a cyclocross career, and no one is more surprised by that than she is. Bruno Roy started racing for fun after her competitive running days ended, but it quickly became a major part of her life: a part-time career, a hobby, and a community. Now, the yoga instructor and masseuse is ready to ride her bike for fun, not work.
As one of her main sponsors, Seven Cycles, wrote in a blog congratulating her on retirement: "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."
We sat down with Mo to reflect on her career as an elite cyclocrosser, and what’s next.
Bicycling: When you started in cyclocross, did you expect your career to go as long as it has?
Mo Bruno Roy: No! I went into it looking for something fun to do. I had no goals, no ambitions, no plans for it. It was something fun to do with girlfriends I had who rode bikes, the Dansko Loves Women club, that was sponsored by a clog shop that carried Dankso clogs! It was just a great group of women I got to hang out with. And being a former competitive runner, I knew I loved competing. I was actually playing Ultimate Frisbee with a group at the time too. I just love training! So I thought I would try my best at this bike thing. But I never had any plans. Each year that I improved, I had to consciously set goals for myself with what the next logical expectation was for me. I hate to use the word organic, but there was an organic evolution to my cyclocross career. It just built on itself every year and I grew with it.
Why choose now to retire?
It’s been something that was a couple years going. A few years ago, I switched coaches, gave it 100 percent, cut back on working. It was something I feared for a long time. When I put my heart and soul into running, I was slightly self-destructive with how I raced and trained and treated my body. When I stopped, I vowed I wouldn’t do that to myself again, where I would run really injured or sick. I knew that I had the potential to overdo it. That was where I was headed. I’d race every race as hard as I could, with as much training as I could, while working full time. I was getting on that same track. Luckily, I wasn’t physically injured in the same way as I was running, but I was getting serious fatigue and it was starting to feel physiological about how chronically fatigued I was feeling.
Was it a tough decision?
It’s interesting. Emotionally, 2013 was so hard, because of losing Amy Dombroski. That was a year I was going to really give it one last hard go and I felt like I was dragging myself through it. That was pretty emotional.
Related: Inspired by Amy
Do you think Amy’s passing prompted you to keep going?
A little bit. It’s funny, I consciously didn’t want that to be the case. I didn’t want it to be a chip on my shoulder, this fiery motivation to "do it for Amy." It just didn’t feel appropriate for me. But I was persistent and stubborn in the face of losing Amy, in that this was the plan, and I was going to stick to it. And she would have done the same thing. I wasn’t doing it for her, but realistically, she would have been like, "You’re being stupid if you’re going to quit now, just race your bike!" So in that way, there was that motivation. But it also encouraged me to cut back and really be selective about my racing. So this season, I came into it thinking that this would be my last season. I couldn’t think of new goals for myself, I just felt like I was reaching. I just wasn’t feeling it, and each time I went to a race, I wondered if I was saying goodbye to a race, and if I was, how does it feel? And it was feeling good. I started to feel positive about it, and not like I had to leave racing. I was ready. I’m definitely ready. I’m not super psyched to train all year and do the same races that I’ve done for 12 years. I feel really good that I could say goodbye to the races and the promoters—not consciously to them, but to myself. I feel a sense of relief that I feel good about it.
Will you jump into any elite races or are you drawing a hard line with retirement?
I didn’t half-ass race, I’m not going to half-ass retire. I’m not racing UCI races. I’m committing to this, and part of that is committing to the rest of my life.
What will you be doing?
We’ll see. I can’t physically work more than I have been, I have 16–18 clients per week. I can add some yoga teaching, which I hope to do. But I’m going to try to not max my schedule out. The reality is that I’ve never had more than 10 hours a week to train anyway, and that’s how much I recreationally exercise! So it won’t change the day-to-day. I love riding my bike, and I know I’ll keep exercising 10 hours a week, but less structured. Racing wasn’t my job, it was something I did extra. Maybe I’ll try some weird sports thing I haven’t done before, where it won’t matter if I’m sore for three days after! That’s not a luxury I’ve afforded myself.
What will your husband, Matt, do now that he won’t have to wrench all season?
It’ll be a transition for both of us. We’ve been so ingrained in being a team, and he loves it. As much as he doesn’t love being up at 2 a.m. recabling a bike, he does. I hope he can enjoy it as well and we can do different things together now as well. It’ll open up a bit more freedom for him to maybe do some of his endurance rides in the fall. He normally has to shut it down in September when cyclocross starts, and then he has to lose his excellent fitness, and I’d love to gift him that fitness instead of taking it away five months of the year! But I doubt he’ll work on bikes less. I think it’s in his being to work on things and make new things. And I hope we can work with our sponsors as testers as well.
And you’re still planning to race singlespeed, right?
Yes! There are so many fun events that I haven’t gotten to do just because when you travel the UCI calendar, you have to focus on it and you can’t afford to race for fun. I did a few this year and it was nice to have races close by and in smaller venues, with a nice community feel. And our singlespeed fields are mixed with the men, and that’s nice. It’s less about being on the front. And you’re passing dudes and they’re cheering. Plus, you develop a relationship with a smaller group of women in the community, which is great. And I think it suits my body type.
What will you miss the most about elite racing?
I think it’s the same thing that brought us into the sport in general: the people. So I think Matt and I will use our former skills as a mechanic and soigneur and hopefully work with some other teams, to stay around.
What will you miss the least?
I won’t miss the high intensity of stress from managing all of it. There’s a low rumble that’s just always there. I never had any extreme stress, or high peaks of stress, from racing, but a low level. Everything has a weight to it. You want training to be going in the right direction with the right goals in mind, the racing itself, the preparation, the teamwork between Matt and me, the expectations of each other.
Favorite race memory?
I’ll say the Namur World Cup, hands down. It has every traditional classic cyclocross thing you think of when you romanticize cyclocross. It’s at a former citadel, and it’s in the French-speaking part of Belgium, so you get a ton of Belgian culture. It’s hilly, it’s always muddy, there are decent crowds… but it’s a really difficult race. There's lots of running. There’s something about that race that I find incredibly special because it’s the hardest race I’ve ever done. And I love it.
Where do you see the future of pro women’s CX going?
We’re on the cusp of a fair amount of turnover. We looked at results for the past 12 years, and almost no one who raced then is still racing. But the past five years has been consistent with the top women. And you’re starting to see young riders and new riders come into the ranks. So it’s a new transition. And you’re starting to see stronger younger riders come in, and I don’t know why that is, whether it’s the exposure the sport is getting or what. But I’m seeing the growth come from a younger group of racers. The level increases every year.
Have you been surprised with the huge amount of support coming from the cycling community since you announced your retirement?
Yes! Bob’s Red Mill messaged me this morning to say they’ve gotten a ton of messages thanking them for sponsoring me. So they are thrilled and flattered, and that’s really important to me, people thanking my sponsors. I wouldn’t be here today without them: I literally was going to have to quit until Bob’s Red Mill came on, I just didn’t have enough money. So they saved my career and I owe them a huge thank you. And all the companies—Seven, Mavic and SRAM—have stuck with me for so long. It’s nice to have this little family, and I feel like they’re stuck with me forever. I have a family and I absolutely love it.
I do have to give incredible props to Matt for sticking with this whole thing. He was in a PhD program for eight years and he made the time and figured out how to make all of this work. If he couldn’t do it with me, I wouldn’t have kept doing it. I don’t know many marriages that succeed when you leave the other spouse at home while you pursue your dream. So I feel super lucky.
What’s the legacy you’re leaving behind?
It’s really flattering to know that I’ve helped encouraged people and inspired them in some way. I’ve never seen myself as a traditionally aggressive athlete, and that’s something I struggled with for a long time. I was afraid I wasn’t serious enough or aggressive enough or intense enough. I wasn’t out for blood. That was somewhat conscious though: I was out for blood when I was a runner, and I vowed that I wouldn’t be that person again! So it’s nice that someone who’s being nice can have success, and that people recognize that as a positive. I really appreciate that, and I hope people can realize that you don’t have to be a mean, aggressive athlete to have success.
The other integral part of the Epic is the route. Sometimes (actually quite often) the route is, and was again this year, littered with unnecessarily long and particularly sh*t sections that tested our patience, and almost caused my dear cousin and partner Charlie Boy to loose his marbles. So much so that he in fact ripped off his baggies mid-stage, continuing in his ultra-rad Chambray cotton shirt and ‘designed-to-be-worn-underneath-your-baggies’ SWAT bib shorts – an almost unforgivable crime of fashion. His only saving grace was that it was pitch-black in the pain-cave … as none of our headlamps were powerful enough to reveal the depths of desperation that Charlie Boy had been pushed to.
Spain wasn’t all sunshine and sangria though. With a strong 2014 season in terms of results, I was left pretty disheartened when my efforts to find a top team for 2015 ground to a halt. The rules set by French Cycling are a bit of a handicap when it comes to finding teams as a foreigner so winter wasn’t off to a great start. Nevertheless, I put it behind me and pulled on my shorts, leg warmers, wool socks, shoe covers, undershirt, arm warmers, thermal jacket, buff, hat, and winter gloves and knuckled down for a winter of mileage. A few hundred cups of cement later and I was loving winter: massive loops, endless mountain roads, frozen rivers and snow lined climbs were the reward for hardening up, ignoring frozen toes and steaming legs, and just getting the work done.
