Like many female cyclists, I was a late comer.
As a child I did lots of sports, but in my teens I was a triathlete, and was actually on the Scottish Triathlon Performance Pathway from 2016 until 2021. As I started to get a bit older I kind of naturally realised that cycling was my strongest discipline and that coincided with me not really enjoying triathlon as much as I used to.
I wouldn’t say it was a grand plan to switch and become a cyclist, but Evan Oliphant [Scottish Cycling Endurance Coach] coached my cycling when I did triathlon and spotted that I might have a bit of talent, so he invited me over to the track at the end of 2021 and then it just kind of snowballed from there really.
There’s not actually many people who know this because I try not to speak about it but I’d been on the velodrome once before – I think it was in 2018 – when they were just trying to scout new people. I had an awful day! I did a massive ride in the morning and then hadn’t fuelled properly and then we went on the track and I got told to do a max kilo effort and I was just so tired.
I was up on the top of the banking and I just slipped and I crashed and so I never came back for three years! I think it’s quite a daunting experience when you’ve not been in a velodrome and you go in and you see just how steep it is and you can’t really imagine how you’re getting around that without crashing, so it was quite overwhelming but I think I picked it up pretty quickly after that!
Put yourself in uncomfortable situations – you never know what might happen
In truth, track cycling can be quite an intimidating sport to get into, and it’s not the easiest one to get into either as there’s only five [indoor] velodromes in the UK, but I think it’s just about throwing yourself in the deep end really and knowing that everybody’s been overwhelmed at some point – none of us have just grown up knowing how to ride a velodrome, so I think it’s just about putting yourself in uncomfortable situations and just trying to have fun learning how to ride it.
It’s completely different to riding a road bike, but to be honest from 2021 to 2022 I was really surprised how quickly I seemed to be able to start performing on the track. It took five months and then I got my first senior GB vest on the track at the Nations Cup in Glasgow; that really took me by surprise but I guess I had a good engine from triathlon and it’s just about learning how to ride the track. Evan and Scottish Cycling did a great job at that – there were three Scottish Cycling sessions a week, so I just committed to that for five months and went all in!