There are no instructions or guidebooks for what to do when the most important person in your life dies, or how to pick up the pieces and try to build a new life for yourself when not a single part of the old one can ever be the same.

No-one tells you just how profoundly losing your husband will affect you. They can have no real idea. Grief is so much more than just immense sadness. It is laziness and lethargy, lack of motivation or caring about anything.

It is physical too, like something is squeezing your chest to the point where you can’t take a deep breath, spinning you round so you feel constantly dizzy. It is a pain so deep inside you that is worse than any broken bones.

Gareth was an awesome yet incredibly modest mountain biker, and it was through him that I really got into biking. I’m competitive by nature and I was always trying to keep up with him, up and down hills and on technical terrain, and although I will never possess the same natural talent that he had on a bike, I think he was fairly proud of his missus’s skills. I would get down (almost) everything he did, just maybe not quite as fast or as stylishly!

A few months after losing Gareth, I started going out riding my bike; sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. At first it felt strange to not be out with him, laughing and having fun together as usual, and I felt a kind of guilt to be out trying to enjoy myself when Gareth was no longer able to do so.

But I felt none of the same excitement or passion that I once had done when riding my bike, and favourite rides and places seemed empty and dull without Gareth there too.

Very slowly, I began to enjoy myself a little. When I rode, I would remember him so easily. It was painful, but made me smile as well as cry. I found that on my bike, pedalling away in whatever weather, I was starting to ‘feel’ again – feel alive, and glad to be alive.

I was able to enjoy the simple pleasure of working hard climbing a steep hill, trying not to ‘dab’ on a technical climb, or finding my flow on a fast swoopy descent.

I felt closest to Gareth when I was outside, in the fresh air and the hills, away from the hustle and bustle and fast pace of life, and the rest of the world that seemed to be carrying on as though nothing had happened.