I’m sitting in my mum’s kitchen in Milngavie just now. In keeping with a running joke, dinner will be late. While we wait, I’m giving her all the gossip from the recent world championships in Hong Kong.

She is running between various pots and pans, her letterbox-red hair bouncing around her face as she flits behind frantic stirring and gasps at what I tell her.

In return she tells me of my brother’s success. This is, of course, why she is making such a feast; the three of us “have so much to celebrate” (including two birthdays from March that I asked to be put on hold to fit around training). My brother, John, was in Northern Ireland last weekend winning The Tour of The North. Quite emphatically; he put several minutes into his nearest rival.

On the phone to my granny I learn that she was scolded for favouritism when gushing at how well I’d done in Hong Kong. John is winning a bike race every weekend, granny, often two! Are you not going to send him a card as well?

He is 26 but my mother can only see us as her two equally-loved children doing well in bike races. The only victory in sibling rivalry I’ve had has been reading race reports where John is described as “the brother of Katie Archibald”. In the Scottish scene, though, I think I’ll still be John Archibald’s sister for a while yet.

I guess I should fill you in on why my granny is so proud of me. Last week in Hong Kong I won my first individual world title in the omnium.

An omnium is four events – the scratch race, the tempo race, the elimination race and the points race – on the one day now, with no time-trial element. AKA no safe bets. Going into it, if you had asked me for predictions on how I’d fare, and I’d answered honestly, I would have told you the following: “I always see scratch racing as a gamble but I think I’ve got the speed in a sprint to avoid major losses. The tempo is anybody’s game. I enjoy an elimination, I think I’m good at an elimination. And the points race all depends on the standings going into it. To defend a high spot I can score points early to put a buffer between me and rivals (an easier place to defend from), but if I’m trying to advance up the standings it’s all about attacking at the right time and exhausting the right people.”

Fast forward to the real thing and I won the scratch and tempo races, came fifth in the elimination race and did indeed get that early points scoring buffer in order to defend a high place in the points race. I won with eight points separating me from Kirsten Wild of the Netherlands in silver and Amy Cure of Australia in bronze, which is a convincing margin but doesn’t really show how close I came to losing it all in that final race. On my knees with 40 laps still to go, it’s one of the hardest races I’ve done. But I managed it.

So I went to bed world champion and got up a few fitful hours later to try to do the same again in the individual pursuit. In the heats before me I saw America’s Chloe Dygert complete the 3km in a time of 3 minutes 22.920 seconds (the fastest time recorded at sea level, six-tenths away from a world record) and knew before I’d started that I was racing everyone else for silver. Alas I didn’t even have the legs for that, qualifying fifth and not progressing to the medal ride-offs.

I was/am pretty upset with my own performance (I’ve basically repeated the result I had two years ago, qualifying in the same time and position) but what is undeniable is that we were all in a different category to Dygert. Qualifiers second to sixth were all within two seconds of each other whereas Dygert was in a league of her own, almost seven seconds ahead. It feels unquestionable that she will get the world record, we now just have to sit and wonder how low the 20-year-old can take it.

I’ll get a crack at pursuiting redemption in Luxembourg next weekend. Sort of. I’m racing the Elsy Jacobs festival and stage one is a 2.8km prologue. A very kind transition into a full road season, although the following two stages of 98km and 112km will be a little more gruelling. Not to worry though, I’m John Archibald’s little sister so I should surely be half decent on the road.