What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job?

After four knee surgeries and hundreds of shots injected into my knee weekly to alleviate swelling and pain, my body is begging me to stop the pounding. My previous three surgeries were on my right knee. My most recent knee surgery took place this July and was on my left knee.

Those lactate sessions were the worst. I'd be in a lab on a turbo trainer and I'd do four 30-second efforts at 100% effort. It sounds so innocuous but the difference between 99% and 100% is huge. You can finish at 99% and you'll be hurting but if you push a tiny bit more – and that's the bit that makes the difference to your training – your legs just grind to a halt. It's like your engine is seizing up. My coach would unclip my feet and pull my leg over the saddle so I could just slide off onto a mat and curl up in a ball.

We were training 12 to 15 times a week, 50 weeks of the year. I think sometimes people see you compete at the Paralympics or other amazing places around the world and think that is what you do all the time. There is an element of that, but a lot of it is just really boring and repetitive. The vast majority of your time as an athlete is spent on the road or in the gym.

I looked straight across at the clock and I was disappointed with the time. I should have run under 49 and I didn't. And I knew I had a lot more in me.

I was living in survival mode when I was young. I'm now trying to teach the people to live in a mentality that they can be whatever they want to be even though the situation around them is hopeless.

A good coach is somebody who has a clear concept of what they want and what they love in the game, is capable of expressing it in an understandable way, and is able to obtain it on the football pitch. They're also someone who loves to help others. This means something more than just going out and coaching a session, they really try to understand who a player is and find the key to helping them. All players have different problems, and we have the capacity to help them solve them. That's why this is a very interesting aspect of being a coach, we have the chance to be capable to influence people's lives.