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| What an amazing couple! Tour Down Under 2010 |
After retiring from professional cycling in 2011 my wife
Lisa and I moved from Sydney to Busselton in WA. Lisa gave birth to Flynn our
beautiful son in June of 2011. I had started to make a return to school
teaching, which is what I had been doing before taking up cycling. I ended up
taking a job in Kalgoorlie WA for 2012. We have been living in Kalgoorlie for
the past two years and we are now expecting our second child (a girl) in
January of 2014. I have happily secured a position in Bunbury for 2014 and we
are very much looking forward to returning to the South West to live hopefully
for the foreseeable future. We both hope to raise our children by the beach in
Bunbury and both intend on doing lots of riding with the South West CyclingClub.
I also hope to build my cycle coaching business - Pro Bike Coaching - as a
sideline to my teaching work.
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| Pete is on the right. In real life he always seems so quite and gentle. Not here! What a machine! This is from the Tour of Wellington, 2009 |
So
Pete, I know you are a professional cyclist. I’d like to hear a bit about that.
How did you get your big break?
There is one clear stand out victory that
helped me become a professional. I started out racing for Randwick Botany Cycling Club and had managed to make my way up to A grade from D grade in a
reasonably short space of time. I had also had a couple of good races at
various opens around NSW mostly in B grade. The FRF Courier Team and The
Caravello Team were joining forces for the 230km Grafton to Inverell in 2004
and asked me to join the team for the race as a guest rider. Being a guest and
very un-experienced at racing over the distance and at a much higher level, I
was asked to try and be in the early break. In such a long race this is usually
caught easily before the end and so you are basically there to represent the
team but also to be used up as cannon fodder. I got myself into the break and
in this rare case we managed to stay away to the finish. I won the three up
sprint and was invited to join the team for the following year. FRF and
Caravello joined forces for that year and registered as a continental team.
This was my first chance to race overseas.
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| Pete wearing his new Australian kit. |
For
lots of people who watch the Tour de France and other cycling events on TV,
being a pro cyclist seems like both hard work, but also a quite glamorous. Can
you tell me a bit about the reality of it?
Yes, life as a cyclist can be really,
really hard. I remember doing a tough stage in the Tour of Langkawi in 2010, I think
it was around 190km and oppressively hot. It was getting toward the end of the
tour and I had managed to retain the KOM jersey to that point. This involved a
lot of energy sapping efforts to claim a KOM point here and there at various
points along each stage. You kind of learn to grit your teeth and live with a
heightened level of fatigue all the time when racing tours, as you keep telling
yourself just get through this stage and there will be a nice hotel, massage
and dinner waiting for me at the end. On this particular day we were staying at
a very good hotel resort in Langkawi. The hotel had a beautiful infinity pool
overlooking the ocean and after some post stage food and a massage, myself and
a few team members decided to go for a relaxing dip. I remember falling into
the water and just floating around in the pool, totally relaxing. I managed to
drag myself out of the water at some point and to send my lovely wife Lisa a
message accompanied by a picture of me next to the pool. I had a hard time
convincing Lisa that I was actually doing it tough and the racing was really hard.
I learnt quickly not to send Lisa (who was back at home working) pictures of
hotel infinity pools while away racing.
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| Tour of Margaret River 2013 |
What
does your typical training involve?
When I was in full training it involved
between 500 - 700km a week. This included one long ride per week of about 200km
and 4 shorter more intense sessions. I would often do an intense hill session (around
the beaches of Sydney) on a Tuesday after the bunch ride; go home for some
lunch and a sleep followed by a criterium race at Heffron Park in the
afternoon. Basically training then racing club races allowed me to push myself
a lot harder than if I just trained on my own. This allowed me to be in good
shape for the early season races. Once I was into the season it was more a case
of race then recover before the next race, so you could back off the training a
bit.
Do
you have any standout races when something out of the ordinary happened?
While racing for Drapac something out of
the ordinary usually happened at most races. It was a great team in that we
never took ourselves too seriously and would always have a good laugh along the
way. From all the antics that happened in the team, there is one event that
stands out for me. During the Tour of Taiwan in 2009 I had made my way into
the yellow jersey. We were racing on a long flat circuit this day and I
punctured. I radioed the team car and pulled off with a teammate (Daniel
Brunsteins) to swap wheels and get service. A neutral spares bike stop was with
us so the team car continued on. I had my rear wheel out and instead of
swapping with my teammate I waited for the motorbike to give me a wheel. He
walked over very slowly and handed me a wheel with a 12-27 cassette on and the
tyre that didn’t have much more air in it than my punctured tyre. I told the
guy what I though of his work as a mechanic and out of frustration (and very
stupidly) threw the wheel into the paddy field next to me. My teammate quickly
gave me his wheel and I rode back into the peloton.
On the way through the convoy
I told Agostino (Ago) our director what had happened and that Daniel may need
help. I didn’t know that the neutral spares had abandoned Daniel, who was
retrieving that wheel I had thrown from the paddy field. By the time Daniel got
back on his bike he was a good five minutes behind the race. Ago went back to
Daniel and had him hold onto the car to tow him back to the race (this is
against the rules, but under the circumstances would most likely be
overlooked). Ago who can be a little aggressive in his approach to racing, was
driving at about 120km with Daniel holding onto the car when a commissaire
(race judge) pulled out of a side street. Ago had to skid to a stop with Daniel
being flung off the car at high speed narrowly missing the commissaire’s motor
bike on his high speed return to the race. After the stage the chief
commissaire was furious with Ago and threw him and Daniel out of the rest of
the race, as well as fining the team a record amount of money. That night at dinner
things were a little quiet around the Drapac table but Ago stayed remarkably
calm. This continued on until breakfast the next morning until I asked Ago why
he was so calm about the whole ordeal. He told me that he had seen his doctor
before coming to the race and his blood pressure was high so he was not allowed
to get upset or over excited anymore. “That’s good” I replied, “Because I have
lost my team shoes.”
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| Tour of Margaret River 2013 |
Lisa,
I’d like to hear about cycling from your point of view. What is it like being
married to someone like Pete, who is so fast?
It’s been a fantastic roller coaster
journey. It’s demoralising going riding together to say the least……. Even when
I outright cheated while out cycling together, Pete could still beat me without
breaking a sweat and talking to me as he was coasting past. I tried so many
times in vain. It was awe-inspiring to
me – his level of fitness. Mostly we
just had a lot of fun. On one of our
first rides together we went through the national park in Sydney and I smashed
myself so much I literally fell asleep on his shoulder over dinner.
I remember doing a handicap race up
Charlotte’s pass at the ESCC Jindabyne camp and being given a head start with a
bunch of others of some 45 minutes or more on Pete……. and him still passing me
half way up, smiling and pinching my bum as he rode past, while I was quite
literally hyper-ventilating. A low point
for me.
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| ESCC Jindabyne Camp 2009 |
Did
you ever dream you would end up marrying a professional athlete?
Not in my wildest dreams. My life around law had been stressful to say
the least. Meeting Pete was such a refreshing change as he was so incredibly
kind, honest and decent. I wanted to move far away from the world I had
surrounded myself with in a way.
Do
you get nervous watching Pete ride?
Not really.
I was pretty naïve a lot of the time about the racing….. and as we went
on and things got very serious between us, I would start to worry when he went
away or we had to say goodbye again. When I knew more about how dangerous the
races could be and would hear about the crashes, it would cross my mind
more. Mostly I was just so excited to
hear about the adventures in whatever country he’d be racing.
What’s
the best thing about being married to a professional cyclist?
I feel a lot of pride about the person Pete
is and I am incredibly proud of him. It’s
such an exciting life, full of travel and lots of fun times. There are very little stresses and the travel
lifestyle is very glamorous. One of the
best parts was meeting up with Pete in various places around the world in
between races. In 2009 Pete and I met up
with Dean and Dominique Windsor and spent an amazing 10 days or so in a villa
in Tuscany when Pete was Australian champion, riding scooters around the
countryside, wine tasting, eating and lazing by the pool. The villa was like something out of a movie,
only better.
One of the absolute highlights was when
Pete won the Australian Championships in 2009 a few months after we’d first met. I have to admit, I didn’t really know what
the race was or its significance (being just a gumby club rider), still very
new to the whole Australian racing scene.
Pete took off to Melbourne for yet another race. Then the next thing, I
was sitting at work on a Sunday when I received a phone call from Drapac
Porsche Cycling team in Melbourne asking me if I could be on the next flight to
Melbourne to celebrate the team’s victory.
My first thought was - oh my
gosh, what will I wear (ha, ha!) The guys picked me up in a Porsche in
Melbourne and we spent the night eating pizza with the team and celebrating
with Michael Drapac and Agostino Giramondo.
Over time I understood what an incredible victory it was for Pete, what
it took to win and I just felt really honoured to be able to celebrate and share
it with him and of course incredibly proud.
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| WINNING the Australian Road Championships 2009. What a guy! |
And
the worst thing about being married to a cyclist?
I’d say its been hard for us as a couple trying
to make the transition back from Pete racing at such a high level on a
professional basis to a more normal life and raising kids. I think everyone finds having a family
challenging at times though – marriage is hard, raising small children is really
hard. As a lot of people would
understand, I thought I knew hard work and sleep deprivation…..until I had
kids. The change in lifestyle was so
dramatic for us, but also really wonderful in a whole new way. It might have been a little easier if we’d
had a more traditional start…. but maybe not too.
I’d like to see Pete race more and more
again over the next few years and build up his cycle coaching business – ProBike Coaching. I look forward to seeing
him and Flynn out riding together one day.
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| Pete and Flynn at Hammond Park in Kalgoolgie. |
Lisa,
I’d also like to hear a bit about your cycling. I know you are expecting a baby
now – so maybe taking a little time off the bike, but you have a pretty
impressive athletic CV yourself. What is
your sporting background?
I wasn’t one of those naturally sporty
kids. I would say I was more inclined towards music, in particular the
piano. However I grew up in a house full
of sport, as my Dad was the Senior Master of Phys-ed at a local high school in
WA. I grew up playing a lot of hockey, basketball
and volleyball. I represented the state in basketball up until about 14, but I
lacked height (and skill). I did a little bit of cross-country running in high school,
albeit very badly, but I really wanted to be good at it.
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| Tour de France, 2006 |
I picked up running again in my late
twenties as a bit of a stress relief from working as a lawyer. I found I could step on the treadmill with a
bunch of problems and step off thinking they weren’t really problems after
all. Running straightens out my thoughts
like nothing else.
I also spent a season working and
snowboarding in Whistler Canada and then later did some snowboarding in Sastriere
in Italy and Niseko in Japan. Snowboarding is so much fun it's quite
ridiculous. You have to try it in your
lifetime.
After quite a few years working long hours
in law firms in Perth, I read the book “It's Not about the Bike” by Lance
Armstrong. While that book no longer
holds the shine it once did for me, it was such an inspirational read at the
time and served to help me change the course of things. I sold my car, packed up my house, bought a
blue Trek (like Lance) and booked a ticket on a cycling trip following the Tour
de France through the Alps. I moved to
the UK to work as a lawyer….. and so began my passion for cycling. To me it was an incredibly inspiring sport.
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| Getting ready to ride the Aple d'Huez 2006 |
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| And at the top of the Alpe d'Huez 2006 |
I’ve done the Sydney half marathon and a
mini triathlon since having Flynn. I am
due to give birth to a baby girl in January and as time goes on (and if I am
not completely insane from lack of sleep), I’d like to train for a marathon. It
is time. I have even bought new running shoes in preparation, as I miss running
SO MUCH. Reading the latest Dim Sum and Long Runs story about Phoebe made me
realize anything is possible!
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| Kalgoolie Women's triathlon finisher in 2012, and look how young baby Flynn is! Amazing achievement Lisa! |
What
are some races you have done that stood out for you?
I did my first half marathon in Hastings in
the UK in 2006 while I was working as an Energy & Resources lawyer in
London. That was a beautiful course with a great finish along the seaside. I caught the train down on my own and
remember feeling a real sense of pride on finishing and then crashing in the
train on the way home.
In terms of races, one of the absolute
highlights would have to be the Gold coast half-iron man in 2008. While I was living in Sydney, a very good
friend of mine (who shall remain nameless, …. oh, and who now lives the expat
dream in Hong Kong!) encouraged me to come and race the event with her at a
particularly low point in my life. It
was fantastic – we had a blast (despite lost bikes and missing wheels)! I knew
I could do almost anything after that. I went up there with virtually no swim
training…… and was almost last out of the water (Jane’s Mum thought I must have
withdrawn), but gained some ground on the cycle and run legs. It was a
tremendous sense of achievement and gave me the boost I needed.
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| Jubilant 1/2 Gold Coast 1/2 ironman finishers. Lisa looks so fresh... would you believe she'd just done a 1.9km swim, 90km bike and 21km run? |
I have also run the Sydney half marathon a
couple of times (2008 and 2012) and it’s always a favourite race just for the
scenery and the vibe of everyone competing.
Sydney is one of the most spectacular cities in the world.
I’d
like to hear the story of how you both got together. I know it involved a bike!
Lisa’s story….
There are differing versions….. while
romance didn’t bloom immediately, I first met Pete in Sydney at the CheekyMonkey bike shop in when I returned back to Australia from London. I took the
little blue Trek into Cheekys (around the corner from my flat) to have someone
put it back together…. And little did I know that that person would be Pete,
the greatest thing (along with my kids) that has ever happened to me. I picked up my bike and this nice mechanic
handed it to me and started explaining a few things he’d fixed on the bike…… he
was just so understated, polite and the whole bike-mechanic thing was extremely
attractive (after working with men in suits all day). We became friends and I
remember always being struck by how nice Pete was every time I met him after that. I remember sitting next to him at a group
dinner before we got together and being completely stuck by how great he was –
listening to his stories about racing and living overseas were completely
inspiring to me. It took a while for
things to develop romantically after that and for me to realise the kind of
partner I was looking for. On our first dates (which were always at dodgy pubs
or RSLs in Sydney), we would just spend hours talking about cycling and racing
and bikes. Hands down, marrying Pete was the best decision I ever made.
Pete’s
story…..
As Lisa said there a differing versions of
how we met…but what really happened is as follows. We had met at the bike shop
and a few months after this Lisa was coming to Melbourne for Around the Bay in
a Day. This coincided with the end of the Sun Tour, which I was racing. So I
invited Lisa to come to a team function held on the last stage. The team books
out a café overlooking the race, so friends and family of the team can have a
birds-eye view of the stage. After the stage we met up for drinks and stayed up
talking late into the night. This was despite the fact I was racing the next
day back in Sydney. I told Lisa that if I won I would take her out to dinner
back in Sydney and finally got to bed around 3 o’clock. On a couple of hours
sleep and with the help of my teammates I managed to win the race and texted
Lis to tell her it was my shout once she got back to Sydney. This resulted in a
series of dates to some very dodgy venues around Sydney, starting with The
Shakespeare Hotel (Shakies) in Surry Hills. Unfortunately my scooter broke down
on the way to the date, I had to walk it home and ride in on my bike instead.
Although I was very late we had a great night and we always seemed to be able
to talk endlessly during our dinners (mostly discussing cycling). I wasn’t sure
if Lisa really liked me at this stage, as at the end of each night she would
stand about 4 metres away from me, which made it very difficult to kiss her. It
took a lot of dates to dodgy pubs and RSL clubs before she would stand close
enough and I was brave enough to kiss her goodnight. Things flourished from
there and since then it has been a wonderful roller coaster ride of cycling
trips, marriage, moving house, changing jobs, kids, etc.
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| Following in his dad's footsteps. Already out on a bike! |
And
so now you have little Flynn and number two is almost here, have you any plans
to get your kids out on bikes? After all, they come from some pretty good
breeding stock!
Little Flynn is a bundle of energy – he
never stops…. I am told like his Dad was at that age. He is the happiest little boy, forever
giggling, wrestling with his Dad and RUNNING…. everywhere, all the time. So I’d say cycling would be a good outlet for
Flynn. Pete’s Dad Ken was a really
talented distance runner – so it’s in Flynn’s genes. I think it was Jens Voigt’s
parents who were at a loss as to how to tire him out when he was young and so
they bought him a bike (so the story goes)!
I believe sport saves you throughout your life, so I want to let him try
as many sports as possible. We’d like to teach him to snowboard too!
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| At the Start of Kal to Menzies bike race 2013. What a beautiful family of three. Soon to be four! |
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