'I cycled from my house in the West End of Glasgow to Larkhall, that would be around 30 miles, rode a 140 mile road race - it went away down over Beattock - won it, then cycled home - so that was around 200 miles for the day.'
Things were different in Jimmy Rae's day.
VeloVeritas took a run up to Crieff Hydro to interview one of the very few Scots to have won national tours - Mr. James Rae.
Ours neat list of questions went out of the window and we decided it would be best to let Jimmy off the leash, year by year, popping in questions where we could...
Up at 04:30, the plan was to get the bus from Porty at 09:00 - however, and to cut a long story short, the van is abandoned in a western suburb of Edinburgh and a cab was flagged down to get me to the airport on time. The flight was undramatic - thank God - and there was Kris in the airport bus park, with the camper. It's seems to be an unwritten law that you have to arrive in a different country from where the race is; so the rendez-vous was in Geneva, Switzerland.
Given events in Milano today we thought you might like to see what the man in the final Giro d'Italia pink jersey, Tao Geoghegan Hart had to say to VeloVeritas some seven years ago... For 2014 the 18 year-old from London was off to follow the path trodden by his mentor, Movistar’s Essex chronoman, Alex Dowsett; heading for the USA under the tutelage of Axel Merckx at Bissell – formerly Trek/Bontrager.
In Part One of our Phil Edwards interview we heard how he was hugely successful on the 'truly amateur' British scene as he racked up the wins, competed in the fated Munich Olympics before heading to Italy in 1973 and making a name for himself in their savage amateur scene, winning big races by 1975. He was able to step smoothly up into the glamorous - but cutthroat - Italian professional world, but not just with any old team, with Sanson, the ice cream company sponsored squadra of Italian Capo, Francesco Moser...