Adventure Ready...

If the words adventure or challenge get your heart racing and stir up excitement, then a bike like the "evergreen" is surely perfect for you.

The first person to ever order a SevenCycles through Circles is a rider we all recognize as a super cyclist. He covers 150–200km on his weekend rides and is constantly dedicated to scouting new routes, whether on pavement or unpaved paths. Even on Strava, he’s usually the one who shows up on segments where you’d think, "Surely nobody has ever ridden here before."

He chose the evergreen as a base, a bike capable of pushing forward through gravel, forest roads, and trails alike. That said, pure gravel riding is rare in Japan, so to keep it comfortable on the road, we settled on the evergreen SL, which uses Seven’s proprietary Argen™ tubeset, while maintaining the geometry of the road bike he had been riding previously.

The Argen™ tubeset is a mix of single-butted and double-butted tubes. Among Seven’s selection of custom tubing—which can be tailored to a rider's strength and preferences—it is the most adjustable and offers the widest range of tube shapes and performance options. As a result, we were able to build a bike perfectly suited to his riding style, accounting for the ratio of pavement to off-road riding he does, as well as his preference for long rides and a "masher" style of pedaling (using heavier gears).

For disc brakes, he chose the TRP/Spyre, which is my personal top recommendation. I believe their ease of adjustment and the superior feel of the dual-piston actuation offer a level of consistency that other mechanical discs can't match.

He’s running Chris King R45 Disc hubs with Velocity A23 rims, fitted with Challenge Strada Bianca 700x30c tires. The evergreen can clear up to 40c tires by default, so if you're looking for something more dirt-oriented, tires like the WTB Nano Race would be a good choice. Conversely, going too narrow with the tires would spoil what makes this bike so good, so I’d cap it at 28c at the thinnest.

He immediately headed out for a shakedown ride over the long weekend.
Even with the slightly wider 30c tires, he was very satisfied with the ride, noting that it felt like it carried speed even better than his previous road bike. At the same time, the handling felt composed enough to be confident even on gravel.

I joined him on my road bike running 28c tires, and as I watched him climb with ease while pushing a gear two steps heavier than mine, I wondered: was it because the bike fit his body perfectly and gave him the exact feeling he had envisioned? Or was it because he couldn't help but put more power into the pedals out of the pure joy of having acquired such a magnificent new partner?

I'm sure it was a bit of both.