Gillian Lambie is a journalism student originally from Speyside. A keen cyclist who will read anything she gets her hands on.

It has been just over six months since I finished any exams, a bit less than that since I graduated and coming up for almost five months since I started working as a Communications Officer for Scottish Cycling.

What a whirlwind.

If anybody caught sight of me in the past week, I would have been a blur - probably with a phone stuck to my ear and I might have even have been slightly smelly if you got too close.

In one week I have had corporate meetings, performance meetings and development meetings.

I have helped facilitate a photoshoot, announced a new sponsor, laminated posters for the AGM, set up pop-up stands, Gaffa-taped “everything”, greeted people, made coffee, drank coffee, watched track racing and fallen off a set of rollers.

I had to order a particularly famous Scottish athlete to make sure he was in the right place at the right time for an awards presentation and…you get the picture.

I always got in trouble when I was a teenager for “burning the candle at both ends” or as I liked to call it, “working hard and playing hard.”

I can only be grateful that when I left the cocoon of my family home I found my, now, fiancé Cameron, who also makes sure that I stop and breathe every now and then.

It is difficult to explain the job I do. I find it difficult to even call it even a job. I have found my way into a lifestyle, completely different from where I was before.

To be a good communications officer, you have to be prepared to answer the phone at any time of day. You have to be able to accost an idol (without going all ‘fan-girl’) to get them to sign merchandise for competitions. I am not ashamed to say this particular person was Katie Archibald.

You also have to be prepared to explain to your family and friends that you can’t chat to them right now or that you won’t be free for the next gazillion weeks because “there is lots happening”. That is the hard part.

However, this particular story has a good ending. 

At the end of the week, on Saturday, we had the AGM that we had been preparing for and we had the awards presentation at the Revolution Series in Glasgow.

There are two moments from that day that will stick with me. And it wasn’t these two events.

At the AGM, one of the members of Scottish Cycling came up to me, shook my hand, and told me she was impressed with what I had been doing. (It is always a bit strange when somebody knows your name and you have never met them!)

It took me aback. It is very easy to be so involved with what you are doing that you forget who is watching and who you are doing it for. Particularly when as Communications Officer you are essentially on the front line: there is only a keyboard between you and the members.

The second moment was just as touching. In the evening my fiancé Cameron came along to Revolution to take photographs, even though I was still working. At the end of the night he turned to me and said, “You are really good at what you do.”

These two statements, one (who was) a stranger, and one, the person closest to me in the world, weren’t memorable because they were compliments – but because they made my hectic week completely worth it.