A few weeks ago, I told Jon Doig, the CEO of Commonwealth Games Scotland, that I wouldn’t be able to hand out an award at the Team Scotland sports awards in Edinburgh on Thursday night because I would be at a training camp in Majorca. Instead, I wasn’t able to do it because of the back injury which has pretty much kept me confined to the room and struggling to walk pain-free. I have been climbing the walls in here but at least I’m in a better situation than I was last year, when I was told on the day of the awards that my tumour had returned and I was heading back to surgery.

This has been such a frustrating injury to deal with. If you sit down you aggravate it, if you lie down you aggravate it, if you stand up you aggravate it. Unless you are icing it, you are pretty much aggravating it. My right side is nice and loose but my left side is rock hard, like a brick wall.

The physio has told me I just did too much too soon. So I am annoyed with myself. She is right - I had to organise my bike, my kit, move to Manchester so find somewhere to stay. And train. And do my oncology stuff on top of that. So I missed the little things, like going for a massage. I didn’t notice my back was getting tighter. Maybe it is nature’s way of saying ‘take it easy, you have gone through so much’. To do a year’s worth of training in ten weeks would be hard for anyone. Or maybe the universe is maybe telling me that the Plan B that I secretly have up my sleeve is going to be great.

Plan A is still turning up at the UCI Track World Cup in Glasgow in just over a month’s time to try to ride the time which has been set for me by British Cycling. If I ride it, I will be in the top four in the world. As I sit here now it seems pretty unrealistic for me to make it.

But I don’t give up. My logical brain is saying to medially withdraw would be the smart thing to do. Go away and train and see what happens. But because I am me, I can’t let go of things. I am still going to go up to Manchester in a few weeks’ time and see what happens as I begin my Glasgow preparations. I draw inspiration from seeing Laura Muir return so seamlessly following a calf problem at the World Athletics Championships.

If it hadn’t been for this setback, I am convinced that at least I would have been able to give it my best shot. Even if I hadn’t made the time, on the back of ten weeks of solid training, I would have said fair play, I tried my hardest. But I just followed the programme and I am injured. Every athlete wants to retire or call it a day on their terms. They don’t want to get forced out by an injury.

The physio said I was cutting too many corners. I was asking your body to do high intensity intervals without the proper strength base, so something will snap. Something will give. What is causing all the problems is the QL muscle, the Quadrus Lumbrum system, a big muscle in your core. I didn’t have the core strength to cope with all the intensity. That is hardly surprising, when you look at what innervates all the muscles in the core: the spinal cord. Mine has been operated upon twice and gone through radiation. A lot of those nerves aren’t even working.

Whether it is Plan A or Plan B, I just want to race my bike. The UCI have released the calendar for next year and there are tonnes of races in Europe. I can go out to Italy in April and spend the whole of April racing Paralympic races out in Italy. Okay, so I wouldn’t be in GB colours, just a plain racing suit. I can just race as an independent, there are races the whole year.

My biggest race is not to win medals any more, it is to enjoy what I do and see how fast I can go. Forget all British Cycling’s targets, if I was coming fourth or fifth in the world that is something to be celebrated.

Plan B is starting to take shape. I ask myself what would change and the answer is not that much. I don’t train in Manchester as it is, I train in the velodrome in London, or Derby. I could train in Europe, get a private coach. The thing I would lose would be my funding, but I only get £800 a month. I probably could do some of this on my own.

For that £800 a month, I am expected to train, put a roof over my head, get best nutrition, best diet. People don’t think about it like that when they here hear British Cycling gets £50m or all those billions of pounds.

We all want to win. But for £800 a month, all that pressure all that stress, I could just get my own coach, my own programme. I would only be accountable to myself then.

My legs look like they did when I first came out of hospital. I have lost all the muscle. You lose quite a lot in three weeks but the good thing is that once you stimulate the system again you get it back quickly due to muscle memory. The first week will be hell, and I can’t just jump straight back into it all for risk of re-injury. I will pretty much have stabilisers on for a while. While leaves me only four sessions ahead of Glasgow.