That was it. I just wanted to have loads of animals and be like a little old lady sat at home with all loads of trophies.

Then medals in the background. That's what I wanted. I want to be a crazy cat, cat rabbit horse lady. That's what I want to be ultimately.

You know that's me minus the trophy.

Is it?

This week on walking the dog, Ray and I went for a stroll with Olympic gold medalist Victoria

Pendleton we met up with Victoria while she was in London so her dog Vala who's a

Belgian Malinois was back at Victoria's home in the West Country but I

couldn't wait to hear all about her and I also wanted to know about the Rhodesian

Ridgeback her mum was matched with when they

both appeared on Channel 4's The Dog House. Victoria is of course one of Britain's most

famous Olympic cyclists and she's genuinely had a fascinating life and we talked about all

of it from her childhood growing up in Bedfordshire with a keen amateur cyclist dad who got her involved in cycling from a very young age

to her career as an Olympian which brought with it a huge amount of success, but took quite a toll on her mental health.

And she was incredibly honest about how important therapy has been for her.

She also talked to me about losing her twin

brother Alex to brain cancer a few years ago and how she's learned to live alongside that grief.

Victoria retired from the sport 14 years ago, but like a lot of Olympians, she wasn't about to

sit around in a onesie watching reality TV all day, which by the way is precisely what I would have done.

Instead, she pushed herself into new challenges like deciding to train as a jockey for the Cheltenham Festival,

despite never having been on a horse before and taking part in an attempt to climb Mount Everest.

And she's drawn on all these life experiences for a new book she's written called The Fear Opportunity,

where she talks about how harnessing fear and doing small things that scare us every day

...