When I was seven, my mum bought me my first bike with gears. We bought it from a friend who had outgrown it and who gave me the rundown of how gears work. I was told it was quite simple. There are five gears – number one is the slowest and number five the fastest. I remember wondering why anyone would use the four slow ones.

Riding that same bike I went on my first cycling tour. I think I was eight or nine and we (my dad, my brother, some family friends) rode from Lochinver to Achiltibuie, which is about 15 miles. We stayed overnight then rode back the next day and at some point in those 48 hours I vowed to never ride a bike again.

For two days I’d tried and failed to keep up with three teenage boys and two grown men: cycling was just too difficult. I walked up hills because trusty gear five made them too hard and I couldn’t keep up going downhill because I weighed half that of my dad. It was hell.

Yet somehow I got back on my bike (eight-year-olds are fickle with their vows, just count their BFF bracelets) and now I’m going to an Olympic Games. It’s a slightly crazy thing to accept when I reflect on the fact I struggled to keep up with anyone on a bike until I was 18.

I only ever did one junior race (2012 Junior Nationals) and until then I really didn’t know what it was like to be dishing out the pain: I was always sat at the table, napkin on my lap, ready to receive. Cue a brief history of Katie continuing to cycle though all evidence pointed to her being awful!

Age 13, my dad took me up Mont Ventoux (a famous 22km, seven per cent average climb in Provence) and we had more stops than the 119 bus route.

Age 14, we went back with my brother, who ascended it three times in one day to join some mad club. I once again plodded along to make it up once.

Age 15, I did the classic teenage girl thing of quitting most sports (only hockey made the cut) and focusing on important stuff like the best parks to hang out at and push-up bras. The good news was I came out the other side because of a talent ID programme that a family friend (the same one from that Achiltibuie ride) pushed me towards and a realisation that sports bras are the best. Mainly the first thing though. The programme didn’t go far but it didn’t need to, it had opened a door to me that I have no plans to let close: track cycling.

I spent the next two years getting my head kicked in by friends, family and various chain-gang riders. I started racing highland games on my new track bike and got a taste of winning, but only because the races were handicapped. Guess what the only teenage girl to attend got? One mahoosive handicap. However, it was a shift from chasing like a dog to being chased like a dog and I loved it. Sometimes the dog crossed the finish line first, so who cares about anything else?

The next season I had a new target: the national women’s omnium league. I spent my weekends travelling to various parts of the UK with a van full of fellow Scottish riders (we all trained at Meadowbank velodrome) to go race in the sunshine. My nostalgia is making me forget the races that were rained off but it was the best summer I’d ever experienced. In fact I sometimes crave its return.

I wasn’t winning any races but I was making an impact. I couldn’t win a sprint, so became known for trying to take laps. Conversely, I also never won a pursuit, so as far as anyone could tell I was just some chopper always off the front.

Here’s the good bit – at the end of that season, just after leaving school now age 18, I went to race junior nationals. As much as I want to tell the long version of this story there isn’t time. The short version is I arrived convinced I was doomed to my most severe kicking to date and left with one gold and one silver medal.

Hurrah!

There are almost four years separating that point from this, and it hasn’t been plain sailing, but that one gold medal set me on the hunt for more. Now I’ve been selected to compete for Great Britain to try to win one of the biggest golds I could have hoped for, an Olympic one.

I’m rapidly running out of word count to say how privileged I’ve been to receive all the help that got me to this point, but please know it’s an outrageous amount.

To the next chapter!