Every day is different and that’s what I’m in love with
AS Glasgow 2014 edges ever closer, the Scottish Mail on Sunday has put together a trio of young Scottish medal hopefuls to provide an insight into what it will be like to prepare for their home Games. This week, it’s the turn of a 19-year-old world-record holder who has taken the world of cycling by storm in recent months...
WHY stand when you can sit? And why sit when you can lie down? You will hear that a lot around cyclists so I’m writing this with my feet elevated and some carrot cake by my side... the diet starts Monday is my other favourite mantra.
In November of last year, I became a full-time cyclist and moved from my home in Glasgow to live and train in Manchester with the British national team.
There have been some big changes. There were the obvious ones — my training has increased by 50 per cent, while my spiced rum consumption has reduced by 100 per cent. And there were the less obvious ones — I’m living with three of the country’s best young cyclists, which has its memorable moments, and turkey mince is not as nice as beef mince but, for some reason, we eat it.
The change that was hardest to predict, however, was that I really like it here.
Why do I like it? There’s a lot of structure to my days and my weeks but there isn’t really a typical day I could recite to you. Instead, I’m just going to tell you about last Thursday and try to make myself sound hard as nails because it was a double track day. Sounds tough already, doesn’t it?
So I woke up at 7am. I think that’s pretty typical, but I appreciate some people like to wake up earlier and embrace the day. I’m not like that, I enjoy embracing my duvet and my pillow. Then I went downstairs and found Housemate A (who we’ll call Helena Bonham Carter to protect her identity) dressed as an elf.
She argues it’s a respectable onesie and not a costume at all. I’m too tired to continue making elf jokes so Helena Bonham Carter eats her porridge in peace.
At 8am, we leave for the velodrome on our bikes. It’s a 20-minute cycle and flat all the way, so I can’t evoke much sympathy with this part of the tale. A large amount of the ride even includes a cycle path so, yeah, we’ve got it good.
I like to arrive at the velodrome with enough time for something to go wrong and not make you rush. This never happens. Something always goes wrong. I always rush.
Do you really want to know the specific top-secret aspects of our training? It’s not anything shocking. We’re training for the team pursuit, and so we do almost all our efforts as a team and we practice pursuiting. We currently hold the 4km world record of 4 minutes 16 seconds, so something is working.
There is no team pursuit event at the Commonwealth Games, however, so after March, my Scotland team-mates and I will be training towards things like the points and scratch races which are solo events. The morning track session is 9am-midday and the afternoon session is 1pm-5pm. I didn’t go to university but I did go to school and so I know that leaves one hour for lunch.
Sounds like loads of time doesn’t it? You could watch two episodes of Friends in that time and still get loads done in the adverts. You could make eight sets of soft boiled eggs in that time. It’s not.
What you can do in that time is pack all your stuff away from track centre, eat a panini from the cafe, unpack all your stuff again and begin to burp your panini back up as you warm-up. Nasty.
Though I do have a top tip from national hero Laura Trott: eating yoghurt helps stop that acidic taste in the back of your throat.
A few people have asked me what it’s like to train with big Olympic names like Laura, Dani King and Joanna Rowsell. I’m not embarrassed to say I spent my first fortnight here terrified I would mess up and they’d kick me out the team.
These girls are motivated and dedicated and all of the other adjectives you would throw at a top sportsperson, but they’re still human. We chat and laugh and training is hard but you’re there with friends, so it’s OK.
But back to my day. We cycle home, either high on the achievement of a good session or bummed out on the back of a poor one, but definitely knackered and therefore quite slowly.
The sprinters (Housemate B and C who we’ll call Rocky Balboa and Jackie Chan) arrive soon after us and the day gradually fades into a relaxing sprawl of food, a movie and being in bed early.
Now I finish by saying: ‘And well, folks, that’s my life now!’ But it’s not.
Yesterday was different and tomorrow will be different — and that’s what I’m in love with.