From pedaling primary schooler to passionate roadie and racer, Alison McCormack tells Melissa Heagney why she’s working to get more women riding.
Name Alison McCormack
Age 41
Member of Team Bicycle Network and St Kilda Cycling Club
Job Head of Commercial and Visitor Services ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image).
WHEN Alison McCormack was a young student she was part of a bike gang. Its members weren’t the type with tattoos and leather outfits—nor the type of gang whose lives TV series are based on.
They were a “gang” who loved riding their bicycles around the local neighbourhood, using two wheels to navigate the suburbs.
From her home in Melbourne’s leafy Surrey Hills, McCormack would wind her way through the streets stopping to pick up her friends on the way to Holy Redeemer Primary School.
“I lived the furthest away from primary school so I’d go past and pick up Fiona and then go past and pick up someone else.
“Even the friend who only lived five seconds from school used to jump on her bike because it was the thing to do,” McCormack says.
“Then we’d go to the shops after school. It was like this little gang,” she says with a laugh.
From those early days, belonging to a bike riding “gang” have been a huge part of McCormack’s life—leading to her involvement in the St Kilda Cycling Club and Team Bicycle Network.
It’s also led to her taking on some of the toughest rides in Australia, and to encourage other women to start riding along the way.
Her passion to encourage more women to ride came from her own experience as a 20-something returning to the saddle.
“I did start riding in my early 20s but it was for a very short, brief, period and not a lot of girls were riding back then,” McCormack explains.
“When I started they had no women’s specific products, no women’s specific clothes … it was a lot different. But in the last few years things have changed quite dramatically. There’s a lot more women’s specific type stuff. A lot of the clothing brands are women’s specific too. That whole landscape’s changing and it’s brilliant,” she says.
While bikes were part of her formative years, and are an all-consuming part of her life now, there was a time when McCormack didn’t ride. “I kind of did a very short stint of bike riding but it didn’t last long because I went overseas for work and then I dropped cycling.”
“I really got back into cycling really only six years ago. I came back from living overseas and I really wanted to get fit. I’d become really quite unhealthy just because of the lifestyle over there,” McCormack says.
“I knew I wanted to get fit but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” she says. “So I was speaking to a girlfriend who I ran into at a wedding—we reunited after not seeing each other for many years—and she mentioned to me that she was doing triathlon.”
“I was like ‘Wow, really I’d really like to get into that’. She said ‘Allie, you want to do it? Have you got a bike’? I had my bike back from way back when and I said ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve got one’ and she said ‘Great—I’ll see you tomorrow at six o’clock at the Tan [track around the Melbourne Botanic Gardens].”
“And I said ‘Great, fantastic, I’ll see you tomorrow night’ and she goes ‘nah—6AM’. I was like what?! I don’t get out of bed then,” McCormack says with a laugh.
“…and there’s guys and girls crying just saying ‘thank you so much for helping us get through’,”
Despite her usual cool demeanor under pressure, McCormack says she was very nervous about her first triathlon training ride.
“I didn’t sleep all night and I got my old bike from my dad’s shed … and then just stayed awake all night because I was petrified of having to get out of bed at 5am in the morning to meet them at 6am,” she says.
While she liked the camaraderie of realised that triathlons weren’t where her passion lay and started to put her sole focus on riding. It not only kept her fit but also helped her through one of her toughest times.
“Very soon after [I started riding again] I had a very sad event in my life where my mum passed away—she just literally passed away,” McCormack says. “She was as fit as a fiddle and it was a really tough time. I feel like I really jumped more into the bike riding side of things because of that and it really helped me get through mum’s death really.
She found support, as well as solace, on her rides. “You can ride along and not know a person from Adam and in that conversation you will talk about something menial you know like ‘Oh, that’s a nice bike you’ve got, that’s a nice colour’, you know, or right through to something that you’d never think that you would talk about with a complete stranger,” McCormack explains.
“It’s just these … passing moments. And I feel like it’s because you’re not facing each other you can have these conversations.”
McCormack’s life changing moments continued on the bike—most recently when she met her partner, a fellow roadie and racer, Lee “Hollywood” Turner.
Turner wooed her by turning up to the regular rides she did dressed in his colourful riding attire (hence the nickname Hollywood). “He would turn up to the same ride I did on a Friday—consistently,” McCormack laughs. She says her friends would joke: “Oh, he’s here again”.
The group went often went out for coffee after a ride where McCormack had the chance to get to know her future love. “We became friends and the rest is history I guess.”
McCormack and Turner are both members of Team Bicycle Network—encouraging and supporting riders to conquer rides including the Peaks Challenge series. They are wave leaders (pace setters), finishing the ride in a chosen time. McCormack’s was 10 hours this year at Falls Creek.
McCormack says she became involved after taking part in Peaks Challenge, Falls Creek for the first time a few years ago. The talent scouts at Bicycle Network were so impressed with her skill and attitude towards the challenge—now known as one of the toughest rides in Australia.
“I just love what I do with things like Bicycle Network and just being involved with a club like St Kilda Cycling Club. The biggest kind of compliment for me in particular is you finish Peaks Challenge and there’s guys and girls crying just saying ‘Thank you so much for helping us get through’,” McCormack says. “That for me is more satisfying than winning a race.”
They’re also roles she can use to encourage more women to ride and take on tough challenges on the bike.
“A big focus for me is to try and get female participation in riding and I think doing the Peaks Challenge in particular is really special for me and seeing more and more women do those rides and feeling like they want to enter … it’s really great to see the numbers have increased,” she says.
Like her time riding to school with her gang of bike friends, McCormack now rides to work at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and often catches up with other cyclist friends for an early morning coffee and chat.
She says it helps her deal with a busy and stressful job at ACMI, where she looks after a large team of more than 100 people. “I recently did a leadership program and the results of a Q and A I did showed that I’ve got a busy lifestyle and have the potential to be a stressful person. They said I obviously counterbalance that somehow and it’s definitely in the exercise zone,” she said.
McCormack admits she does do a lot of exercise. She rides three to four times a week before her ride to work. She does regular club rides, weekend rides with friends, a ride with partner Turner and also manages to squeeze in a “trip out to the hills” (Mount Dandenong) and criterium racing on Sundays with the St Kilda Cycling Club where she is currently the Treasurer.
Through it all she encourages women to give road cycling a go. The first step, she says, for most women is to look for women’s specific rides on cycling club websites—and join the gang.
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