New Bike Day: My ENVE MOG
The bike’s flawless. Me? Not quite.
The first bike I remember owning was red - it was a mountain bike with dinosaurs, or maybe it was mountains, on the side. Then there was my Mongoose BMX, which to this day, is maybe the coolest bike I’ve ever owned. I bought my first road bike, a Raleigh Revenio C1, in 2014. It had a Shimano Claris 8-speed groupset and cost me £519.
Where am I going with this? Well, whether it’s a dinosaur-themed mountain bike, a cool as heck BMX, or a Raleigh Revenio C1, there is something about new bike day that makes you feel like a kid at Christmas.
If you haven’t already, please Subscribe by placing your email in the box below.
All of those bikes meant something to me at different times in my life. And now, there's a new one to add to the list. This past weekend, I took delivery of my latest bike, my new race bike for the year. The ENVE MOG, and let me tell you, it’s a thing of beauty.
I suppose I should make it clear that ENVE is a sponsor of mine. I have a contract with them, and I’m paid by them, so yes, of course, I would say it’s a dream bike. But, honestly, it is a dream bike. It’s simply beautiful.
How I signed
I was on a random mountain road in rural Oregon when I got the call that I was going to be with ENVE for 2025. It was Day 5 of our 3,000km trip down the west coast of the US and we were about to step out to ride in a monsoon.
The phone signal was coming in and out, but the message was loud and clear: you’re an ENVE athlete now.
Since I started road cycling, having a pair of ENVE wheels on the bike has been seen as bling. It exudes performance. I’d eye them up longingly if I saw them on someone else’s bike at the cafe. Now, that’s going to be me.
The New Bike
I’m going to be riding all three models of ENVE this year: the MOG, Fray, and Melee.
The MOG is the gravel bike, Melee the road bike, and the Fray is the happy in between of the two. This past weekend, I took delivery of my MOG. Let me take you inside the build.
I’ve gone for a hybrid between Shimano GRX and Ultegra. It’s GRX for the shifters, brakes, and derailleurs, but Ultegra chainrings. This is simply due to size. The biggest GRX chainring is 48-31, which isn’t enough for modern-day gravel racing.
Choosing Shimano over SRAM wasn’t necessarily the obvious choice. I’ve always been a Shimano boy - I’m a roadie after all - but SRAM has quite the hold on the gravel market. I do prefer having two chainrings, again it’s probably the roadie in me. And, Shimano just works. If (when) I crash, you know that Shimano is still going to be functioning.
For wheels, I’m racing the ENVE 4.5 SES - white decals, of course. For one, they just look beautiful, and secondly, they work incredibly well. I spent a long time on the phone with Alexey when I first signed trying to figure out what’s best, through all of his testing and opinions, it seemed to be the 4.5s. Both the compliance, the aerodynamics and well, the style - are just perfect. They’re rolling with Panaracer Gravelking X1’s at the minute in 45mm.
My favourite feature of the MOG is one you cannot see, the cargo bay storage. You can flick the bottle cage open, and hidden in the frame is a storage sleeve. I haven’t 100% decided yet, but I think I’ll run all of my ‘get me home’ spares in here for races, and not a saddle bag.
I can fit two Tubolito’s, tyre levers, a tiny hand pump and a spare CO2 in there. I’ll also be adding some backup tyre plugs, and chain links into there too.
The specs, I’m riding Topo Green, and the tyre clearance is officially 50mm.
Don’t Crash
I took delivery of the bike less than 24 hours before my first race day of the season. On my short—but very sweet—pre-race ride the bike was special. I descended like never before, checking myself out in every shop window I passed. The bike was nippy, fast, and fun.
But, there’s an elephant in this room - because I crashed my shiny, new, beautiful bike within 50km of owning it.
Experience should have told me not to race a brand-new bike. Fortunately, I knew better than to listen to myself
I can assure you, that the best way to find the limits of a new bike is not on race day. But, in a roundabout way, crashing the bike - which was 100% my fault - gave me more confidence in the equipment.
I fly to the US at the end of this week where I’ll be taking delivery of my second new bike of the year, my road bike, the Melee.
It’s like having Christmas twice in two weeks.
In future, I’ll be doing a more ‘techy’ review of the MOG, but if you want to read more now then James Huang recently did a cracking Substack article. Enjoy.
While you’re here…
I’ve added a paid subscription and a ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ link to this post. As the year progresses, I’m planning on building this blog and putting out articles which I’ve always wanted to write but for whatever reason, haven’t wanted to pitch.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joelaverick
Project TAG, proudly partnering (for my athletic, influencing and maybe pee location ability) with…
Love the bike. What’s the best little place to eat in Girona and why is it “El Carrito”?