ON her Instagram account, Louise Haston has posted stark before and after shots.

The first is a burst of colour, showing the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow at the height of the 2014 Commonwealth Games this summer. The second, taken a few weeks later, is drab and grey, the arena where Haston claimed double silver stripped of its banners, flags and advertising hoardings.

The 34-year-old from Edinburgh would be the first to admit that the post-Games slump has hit hard. "It's a bit like your wedding day," she says. "You spent all that time planning for it, the months of build up, then it's over - and there is not going to be anything as big again in your life."

Haston piloted triple Paralympic champion and visually-impaired rider Aileen McGlynn in the women's para-sport sprint and 1km time trial B tandem events. On both occasions, they were pipped to gold by English duo Sophie Thornhill and Helen Scott, although from the deafening roars of the 5000-strong crowd packed into the velodrome, you would have thought they had won it. McGlynn and Haston's story will be charted in a new exhibition to be unveiled at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow early next year.

As Haston stood track centre immediately after winning her second silver, she all but announced her retirement. It had been a long road to Glasgow without funding and the constant demands of juggling her training alongside a day job as a customer services advisor in a bank and looking after her family had taken their toll.

Yet as the Games drew to a close and Team Scotland prepared to disperse, Haston found she simply couldn't call time on her cycling career. "I just hate not being on my bike," she says. "I had every intention of retiring after Glasgow, but the following day the first thing I wanted to do was jump on my bike."

She piloted fellow Scot Laura Cluxton at the 2014 British National Track Championships in Manchester last month where they claimed double bronze. "We had only managed to squeeze in three track sessions beforehand so it wasn't ideal and I didn't really want to ride but Laura did, so I thought: 'Let's bite the bullet, go down there and see what happens'," she says. "We came away with two medals. Those are Laura's first two British national medals so seeing that smile on her face - she was completely over the moon - made me glad I did go. The times weren't exactly great. The [flying] 200m was OK. I think we went faster than Laura and Fiona [Duncan] did at the Games, so she was happy with that."

She and McGlynn, meanwhile, hope to sit down in the coming weeks to have a frank discussion about how any future cycling partnership may pan out. Before then Haston will be back in action as the 2014 Scottish National Track Championships get under way in Glasgow on Friday.

With no tandem events on the three-day competition programme, it will be a solo outing for Haston. While a sprinter by trade, she will additionally tackle a clutch of endurance races. "I have entered pretty much everything and will use it as training," she says. "As well as the sprint events, I'll do the points race and individual pursuit. I haven't done a lot on my solo bike, so I'm not expecting miracles."

Haston made the switch to track cycling from athletics in 2009 as part of sportscotland institute of sport's Gold4Glasgow talent ID programme. The formidable fire in her belly that took her to Glasgow 2014 refuses to be extinguished. "I came to cycling quite late and still feel I have so much to learn," she says. "That's why it's such a pain there is no funding because I definitely know I can improve if I was given the chance. I would love to continue doing this for at least another couple of years. Aileen and I are second fastest in the world just now and with a bit more time riding together who knows what we could achieve."

When it comes to her future as a tandem pilot, Haston is both realist and optimist in equal measure.

"It's difficult with the tandem because unless you are on the GB squad, the chances of getting picked for anything are slim," she says. "In an ideal world we would like to get selected for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, but as things stand that's never going to happen. Aileen is no longer part of the British Cycling programme. I think, though, if we can get back training together, start posting some decent times then hopefully people will have to notice."