to join The City for 1996 was accepted, it was clear that we were, to all intents and purposes, on our own. If we wanted to succeed we’d have to do it together – there was a dearth of coaching expertise, or any practical support in terms of sponsorship and funding. The City was an ambitious club, and great to be part of, but it had few resources and minimal funding.
But The City was as good as it got in the UK. Quite simply, there was practically zero sponsorship in track cycling, and it was ludicrous to think that it could ever be a career. It was a passion, a hobby, and for me it was coming close to being an obsession. It was all I thought about, all I wanted to do, and if that is the definition of ‘obsession’, then I suppose I’d have to admit it. But at the back of my mind – and occasionally venturing to the forefront – was one of life’s golden rules, instilled in me by my parents: that I needed, in the classic parents’ phrase, ‘something to fall back on’. In other words, a degree or qualification that would enable me to find a job when, inevitably, the day came to enter the real world.
Craig already had something to fall back on, having qualified as a piano tuner. But now, as we prepared for the 1996 season, he was fully committed to cycling – and just as obsessed as I was.
Looking back, I recognize the years 1995 and 1996 as key ones. My gold medals in the British and Scottish championships in 1995 acted as a catalyst for me to think that I could enjoy some success in this sport, if I worked hard at it. I mentioned in the Introduction that I was more interested in the question of ‘how’ than in that of ‘why’ some people decide to commit themselves so fully to something, to the extent that it does come close to being an obsession.
But now, when I think of this period, when there was no real sponsorship, no lottery funding, few positive role models in the sport – at least few who actually made a living from it – and general uncertainty, I do ask myself: why? It’s hard to explain what kept me going. I certainly got huge satisfaction from achieving success, and winning races, but there was something far more powerful than that driving me on. For me the most potent motivational fuel was not ambition, I think, but curiosity. I wanted to see how far I could go.
As I said earlier, it felt as if I were embarking on a journey, with the destination – and indeed the stop-off points – unknown. But that was the most thrilling thing about it: I could dream about where it might take me. The Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 was an obvious goal, the Olympics in Sydney in 2000 a long shot, but that’s all these thoughts were at this point: dreams.
Some people take a gap year, and buy a round-the-world ticket, setting off with no fixed itinerary, only vague ideas of where they might go and what they might find. I suppose I was doing something broadly similar, but for no fixed period, and with Craig as my travel partner, even if our ‘travel’ usually entailed nothing more exotic than repeated visits to a secluded road by Edinburgh airport – but more on that in a moment.
Craig was approaching his mid-20s, and I think he was very conscious of it being his time. Like me, he was also on a steadily upward curve of improvement, and he didn’t know when that would end, but he was probably in more of a hurry than me. I was his sparring partner but I was also like his mini-me, in his shadow. I was working in the bookshop and had applied to start sports science at Heriot-Watt University. Craig was unemployed, scraping by and no more, and it wasn’t easy for him. Then again, we had a friend the same age as Craig, who we’d cycled with before he gave up and got a ‘normal’ job. He was already earning a lot of money, but I remember him saying he’d give up what he was doing to have the opportunity to do what we were doing. ‘Living the dream’ was how he put it. And I don’t recall noticing that his tongue was in his cheek.
Craig was no ‘workshy fop’, to quote Vic Reeves. He considered cycling his full-time job, even if there was no money in it. We became virtually inseparable, training together, and, when we weren’t training, poring over training manuals. Craig was a voracious reader of books, at least a voracious skimmer of books and borrower of library books. He trawled libraries in Edinburgh, taking out books about training, fitness, physiology, muscle power – anything that might yield even the tiniest nugget of useful information or advice.
Some of this information influenced our training, which was experimental, to say the least. We became fascinated by the ‘big gear principle’ in training. Craig had watched Graham Sharman, an Australian sprinter, using very big gears, and it made sense to him. It could improve strength, and specifically cycling strength; it was like doing weights, but on a bike. We decided that this was important; that it should be a central plank of our training, pushing a huge gear, no matter how slowly you were going. We’d find hills and grind our way up them.
And we found that quiet little road by Edinburgh airport, which was perfect. Traffic was virtually non-existent, it was over a mile long, and it was dead straight.
It was just as well there was no traffic, because we might have caused an accident with drivers craning their necks as they went past, trying to work out what the hell we were doing. Picture the scene: two racing cyclists in full gear, pedalling very slowly, clearly making big, vein-popping efforts, but moving at a snail’s pace. Had anyone been out for a stroll, they would have overtaken us.
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