Life in the Peloton, presented by MAAP

Grassroots to World Tour with Luke Plapp

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by MAAP

As things are wrapping up on a fantastic Aussie summer of racing, I’ve got one more piece of Australiana for the pod: three-time Aussie national road champion Luke Plapp. 

This was a really cool pod for me to record. Both Luke and I are members (and started out) at the Brunswick Cycling Club, here in Melbourne. I happily took the opportunity to go back to the Brunswick Velodrome to catch up with Luke a few weeks ago, in what was the early phase of his build-up to what he hopes will be a breakout season. 

Even though he’s still only twenty-three, it seems like ‘Plappy’ has achieved a lot in a short space of time. Before turning pro with Ineos in 2022, he was a decorated track cyclist, picking up Olympic and Commonwealth Games medals, as well as a junior world title. 

It’s been such a fast rise, I was really keen to get the whole story from Luke: going from a sports-obsessed kid in Melbourne, his time on the track, and turning pro with one of the biggest teams in the world. 

I also wanted to know about how he’d adapted to life as a pro in Europe and to hear about the challenges that he faced having turned professional with limited exposure to racing and living over there. 

Like a lot of champions, Luke has a great ability to recognise and work on the things that will help him improve. It was really eye-opening for me to have such a humble conversation with someone in his position. I think it’s a great listen because of this, and there is a lot in his approach that could be of real interest to you guys at home. 

Indulge in the last rays of the Aussie summer, and give this a listen; you’re gonna love it!

Cheers!

Mitch

The first Race Communiqué of the season

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by MAAP

Welcome to the first Communiqué for the 2024 season!

First off, I’m delighted to say that my good mates Luke Durbridge and Tom Southam are back with me for another year.

If you haven’t heard it yet, the Communiqué is our pro racing specific podcast, and I couldn’t think of a couple of better guys to have on board to get some great insight into the races.

As well as being good friends of mine these two have years of experience in pro cycling with Luke currently racing for Jayco Alula and Tom who is a DS at EF Education Easypost.

All through the racing season we will be diving inside the pelo with Luke, hearing the view from the team cars from Tom and, of course, I’ll be providing my own armchair style take on the racing!

For this first episode we’ve got an early season theme. After a good few weeks at home Luke is well settled in Perth, getting ready to start racing without having done any racing back in Australia – something he’s – amazingly – never actually tried before!

He reflects on the difference between starting early at races like TDU or kicking off in the more traditional European style.

We discuss our thoughts on the way that the top riders tackle the off-season these days (or don’t!). He also has some cracking tales from his legendary local bunchie - which I’ll leave for you to enjoy. 

I’ve been on the ground at the Tour Down Under of course, and I’ll bring you up to speed with the latest racing news, as well as a few of the things that grabbed my attention at the first World Tour race of the season.

It’s also been a busy period for Tom, who was DS-ing the early season Australian races. He takes us a bit deeper into the world of the DS and talks about some of the tactical detail of the recent races, as well as getting our thoughts on the why recently retired riders do so well in the team car. 

It was really great to get things going again making this pod. We all love the racing, whether we are doing it ourselves, talking about it, or even just watching and reading about it.

Getting back together and getting into talking about the races was really exciting after the short break. Let’s hope it’s the start of a big year to come.

Sit back, relax and have a listen to The Communiqué.

Cheers!

Mitch

Talking Luft! With Pat Drapac

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by MAAP

We’re right in the middle of the Aussie cycling summer so - keeping with the local theme - for Talking Luft I caught up with my riding buddy Pat Drapac, down in Adelaide’s central market during the Tour Down Under.  

If you’ve not had a listen to the podcast about the adventure that Pat and I had riding across from Melbourne to Adelaide, then go and give it a listen! Pat’s a great talker with a huge range of interests, and he’s also one of Melbourne’s most well-known cycling figures. 

He’s been a rider, a team owner, a team sponsor and as well as many other things, he’s the son of Michael Drapac, whose team I began racing for in 2006, and who went all the way to the podium of the Tour de France as a sponsor of the Cannondale Drapac team. 

Like me, Pat is a child of the nineties and like me, he’s big into his food, so he’s just about the perfect guest for Talking Luft! 

What I loved about Pat’s interview was hearing just how much he goes against the grain of a lot of current riders. He’s also a former chef, so he has the booze questions pretty well covered too! It’s a refreshing listen, and an interesting take on the sport and the surrounding culture. 

So, check it out, and enjoy.

Cheers!

Mitch

MAAP to RAAD with Pat Drapac

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by MAAP

2024 is here and I wanted to kick off my new adventure with MAAP with another adventure of my own. I’ve really enjoyed getting into adventure riding in the past few years since I retired from professional racing, so I thought what better way to head over to Australia’s biggest race, the Tour Down Under?

The route was a tough one, my goal this year was to make a bee-line from Melbourne to Adelaide. It’s a 900k trip (at best) so I drew a straight line across, and accepted that we’d take whatever terrain the journey threw at us! It was a mixed bag, with the only real goal being to avoid main roads and to make sure the stops had some decent pubs. 

One of the things that I really enjoy about spending so much time in the saddle is really getting to know the people that you are riding with. When you are side by side for twelve hours a day, suffering in the dust, or a stinking headwind, your conversations can drift off and you get to know your riding partners on a new level. 

For this reason, I chose to invite an old friend and cycling buddy, Pat Drapac along for the ride. Pat is well known to anyone who has raced in Melbourne in the past twenty years. He’s been a rider, a team sponsor, and a team owner, and is a real part of the Melbourne scene. 

It had been quite a few years since I’d been able to spend time with Pat, so I wanted to use this journey to reconnect with him and learn about his cycling experiences, whilst we both got to do what we love – riding our bikes. 

The three-day trip was challenging and rewarding. Packed with all the things that make adventure riding so great. Pat made for great company, and we talked for hours about a huge range of topics, from his roots in cycling, his love of cooking and his sense of adventure with anything from pickling vegetables to moving to Copenhagen. 

I’ve put all the best parts of this trip into this pod for you guys to enjoy. Finding out new things about an old mate is a great feeling, and these trips are ideal for that. I hope you all get a sense of the adventure that we shared and enjoy the pod!

 

Cheers!

Mitch

Talking Luft! with Luke Plapp

It has been a big year here at Life in the Peloton, and we’re going out with a bang for this last episode of the 2023 season. I’ve got one of the greats of the young new generation in Australian cycling on the pod today – I’m Talking Luft with Luke Plapp. We’re both long-time Brunswick Cycling Club members, and I always love getting the chance to record the pod in person, so it was a special moment to sit down at the iconic Brunswick Velodrome to record this episode with Plappy. He’s home from Europe and he’s gearing up for a huge summer of cycling in Australia, where he’s lining up for the triple - looking to take his third National Road Race Championship at Buninyong in January. We talk a bit about this goal and head further back into the Luke Plapp story to get some of the history, and of course, I put him through the full Talking Luft treatment.

I hope you enjoy this last listen of 2023!

Thanks for all the support and encouragement throughout the season, we’ll be back in the new year with heaps of exciting new content.

 

Cheers,

 

Mitch

Talking Luft with Daryl Impey

Daryl Impey, a house hold name when it comes to a long standing and well respected pro in the world tour. 

Daz is a close friend of mine as we had the pleasure of crossing paths, racing side by side and living around the corner from each other and our families throughout my time in Europe. 

He is closing out a monstrous 16 year career this season! But it hasn’t been without some major set backs and challenges along the way. He has had life threatening crashes, false allegations and teams folding right under his nose. But on the other side we have seen him pull that yellow jersey on at the TDF, become multiple national champion and transform himself from a Domestique to champion leader. 

Back in 2019 I sat down with Daryl to chat about the ups and downs of his career to that point and learn more about what makes him so bloody resilient! This is a must listen if you haven’t heard it before, and if you have I strongly urge you go back and listen again. Daryl shows me that when you are a pro for 16 years it’s never going to be smooth sailing. That’s what makes a successful pro, someone who can fight back and become even stronger.  

But now, this week we have Daryl for Talking Luft! I wanted to pay homage to his brilliant career. We chat all the usual stuff but i have spliced a few extra questions in to wrap up his amazing career and to hear about what the future holds. 

Cheers, 

Mitch

Cyclo-Cross with the G.O.A.T - Sven Nys

We’re getting to the end of the Life in the Peloton season, and I’ve saved a special episode for this week. Just as the long road season winds down, the winter cyclo-cross season is firing up for the year. And you might be asking – what exactly is cyclo-cross racing?

To learn a little bit about the sport and its history, I’ve found someone who can talk me through it. But it’s not just any old person, I’ve gone and found the best in the business, the undisputed G.O.A.T – Sven Nys.

 

Sven has an incredible ability to teach and talk about cyclo-cross to literally anyone – from kids right up to pros, and he does it in such a humble and entertaining way. He’s so good at it because he is an absolute champion and a true giant of the sport, the best to have ever thrown a leg over a cyclo-cross bike – or I should probably say to have thrown a cyclo-cross bike over his shoulder.

 

An incredibly dominant rider throughout his career, Sven won literally everything of importance – earning him the nicknames The Cannibal, and the Eddie Merckx of cyclo-cross. At his peak in the 2004 – 2005 season, he did something that no other cyclo-cross rider has ever done, when he took out the National and World Championships, won the Superprestige, and the Gazet van Antwerpen, and finished the season ranked number one in the UCI rankings and the World Cup. He is the only cyclo-cross rider to have achieved this even once, and he went close to repeating the incredible feat in the following season – only just falling short when he crashed in the final lap of the World Championships.

 

It's an absolute privilege to have Sven join me on Life in the Peloton today, I hope you enjoy the listen!

 

Cheers,

 

Mitch

Talking Luft! With Niki Terpstra

This week, I’m Talking Luft with the great Dutchman himself, Niki Terpstra.

He’s one of the most successful classics riders of our time and a proper one-day racing legend - he’s won just about everything there is to win up north, from E3 Harelbeke to Dwars door Vlaanderen (twice), and of course his epic solo victories at Paris-Roubaix in 2014, and Tour of Flanders in 2018, where he became the first Dutchman to win the great race since Adri van der Poel in 1986.

He’s a two-time Olympian, a 6-day champ, a World Championship silver medallist on the track, and he rode for some of Europe’s biggest teams from Milram to QuickStep and Direct Energie. He retired at the end of the 2022 season, but when you were racing Niki Terpstra, you always had to be on your game. You never knew what he would pull out of his hat, and if he went away up the road, chances are you wouldn’t see him again.

But today, he’s getting the full Talking Luft treatment – the usuals like casquette style, World Champ rainbow style, and favourite cheat meals (tiramisu – nice). We talk all things retirement and the inevitable question – do you miss it? It’s something I’m hearing more and more from us recently retired pros, but the level of racing has jumped up so much in recent years that very few people seem to miss being out there, taking risks, suffering, amongst the carnage – and Niki is no exception.

It was a pleasure to sit down and chat with Niki Terpstra, and I hope you enjoy listening to this episode of Talking Luft!  

 

Cheers,

Mitch

My Everesting

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by Rapha 

Would you ride up and down a mountain all day in an attempt to reach the virtual height of Mt Everest? I didn’t think it was for me either, but I decided it was a trend I needed to try for myself! If you haven’t heard of Everesting, come along as I make my attempt to reach the lofty heights of the majestic Everest, with a day riding the slopes of Mt Macedon.

 

At first glance, it might sound crazy, but the idea behind this episode was to get to understand what the trend is all about, and why so many people have jumped on board with it. Everesting evolved during the pandemic to become a challenge that pros were taking on, and I was introduced to it during that time – it was all about speed, and how fast could you do it, and that really deterred me. To be quite honest, riding up and down a mountain all day just seemed boring and unnecessary, and didn’t appeal to me at all.

 

But it was a conversation with Andy Van Bergen earlier this year that changed all of this and piqued my interest in trying it for myself. Andy told me the story behind the event and the background to the idea – and I really liked it. As we talked, it occurred to me that the whole thing is just another way to challenge yourself. It’s a challenge that anyone can take on, in their own way – you can do it from your own backyard or your lounge room if you like. And

as you might know, that’s something that I love to explore and to encourage others to get involved in.

 

Getting Andy’s perspective on it was key for me to understand what it’s all about, to learn all the tricks that go along with it, and to work out if it’s something that I would love or hate. I also chatted with Lachy Morton to get a different perspective – he’s coming from the other end of the spectrum, the elite level, where he’s trying to go for the record. From there, I decided to put together all that knowledge, and make my own Everesting attempt, and to take the listeners along on the journey, so you can form your own opinion about whether it’s something you want to tackle for yourself.

 

I hope you enjoy the listen and get inspired to take on some new challenges for yourself!

The Race Communique - La Vuelta a España edition

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by Rapha

 

We’re back with the third installment of The Race Communique – where we get back to our roots chatting in depth about what’s happening in the pro peloton. This week we’ve got the whole gang back together, with Luke Durbridge, and Tom Southam, both joining me on the pod.

 

I couldn’t wait for this opportunity to really pick apart all the happenings of the Vuelta – and there was a lot to unpack. Of course, the incredible performance by Sepp Kuss, but also the drama surrounding Jumbo’s dominance and team leadership. When has a team last finished top three in a Grand Tour?! We take a deep dive chatting about Jumbo Visma and their incredible dominance this season – winning all three Grand Tours in the same year with different riders, which is virtually unheard of. I get a DS and rider perspective on whether Jumbo made the right call in how they supported Sepp and talk about some of the weirder optics we saw playing out on the road as the team tussled with the decision over ultimate leadership.

 

And on the flipside some underperformances at the Vuelta – what happened to Remco, it wasn’t a terrible performance by any means, but it wasn’t up to expectations - so was it pressure or was it form in the third week? Beyond the Vuelta, we also cover some of the latest advancements in the world of aerodynamics and chat about some of the strange aspects of team culture that play out during transfer season.

 

So, sit back and enjoy this insight into the pro peloton and the world’s biggest races on The Race Communique!

 

Cheers,

 

Mitch