"You're lapping Jason Kenny again" – how a local cyclo-cross race provided inspiration for a man with six Olympic golds

“I was still racing someone – I was just racing the blokes in 49th and 51st," said Jason Kenny about the cyclo-cross race that renewed his love of cycling.

The BBC reports that at the end of October 2017, having not raced a bike competitively since the Rio Olympics, Kenny entered the Horwich Humdinger in the North-West Cyclo-Cross League and finished 50th of 54 riders.

"I had a running commentary from other riders' families on the way round," he said. "'You're beating Jason Kenny!' 'You're now lapping Jason Kenny!' 'You're lapping Jason Kenny again!'

"I went fully expecting to get my head kicked in. I'm by no means a great cyclo-crosser, but I'm not unfit, and I'm good at riding a bike, obviously, but these guys are really fit and really strong, and they work for a living at the end of the day.

"I found it so inspiring, to step out of our bubble and see that – guys and girls, just enjoying it, playing around and getting really muddy. What's not to love about that?"

So having flirted with retirement, Kenny finds himself reinvigorated – albeit perhaps only in the mental sense, given that he and Laura have a young baby.

It seems that, as with many of us, training is now something the two of them have to fit in when they can.

"We've got a gym in the garage now, which has helped a lot, because it's taken the commute out of doing gym sessions. Having little Albie has made us have to streamline our lives; when it's just the two of you, you can be quite wasteful, and you've got plenty of time, but now that's all changed, and we have to try to train as efficiently as possible, and to make Albie our priority.

"We've got turbo-trainers set up in the garage, and he does sleep through the sound of us riding them. That's the best thing about having the gym in the garage: just take him in there when he's asleep, and then do your gym session. And hopefully not wake him up halfway through."

Kenny will return to the track for the Revolution Series in Manchester on Saturday, but doesn’t sound enormously confident about how he’ll perform.

"I hope to have pretty good form, to be honest, but it's not really happening – honestly, I thought we might have slept a bit more than we have done.

"Not to keep going on about it, but we're not sleeping awfully well at the minute. It's learning all the time about how that affects your recovery, and how much you can train.

He says that whether he goes well or not, the event will be a ‘stepping stone’; part of what is hopefully a long upward curve following a more prolonged break from competitive cycling than he’s ever had before.

"I started walking the dogs and spending plenty of time outside, and then I began going to the gym just to get back in shape and because I enjoyed it.

"I was going out on the road on the bike, doing sportives, just because I enjoyed doing them. So I was sort of training anyway, and I just thought, sod it, and cracked on properly, thinking, let's give it another nudge and see what happens.

"It was about getting the love back: realising I do still enjoy it, and that I don't just do it because we've put it in a planner and the planner says do it."