'I was calorie counting – I couldn't eat one blueberry over': How one British rider overcame years of underfueling and turned pro

“If it got really low, I’d probably go into a coma,” says Hamish Armitt in a matter-of-fact tone. The 22-year-old is talking about hypoglycaemia, when blood sugar falls too low, and the medical emergency that can result. It’s something few professional cyclists will ever have to worry about. But Armitt has type 1 diabetes, diagnosed when he was 15, and has to pay strict attention to his blood glucose. “If it goes high, that’s not good either,” he says, “but going low is the big thing you want to avoid.”

Over the past seven years, Armitt has come to terms with the reality of life with diabetes. Among the 370,000 type 1 diabetics in the UK, there are few professional athletes, but Armitt – upon signing for US UCI ProTeam Novo Nordisk this year – proudly joined that list. The Glaswegian’s rise to cycling’s elite ranks has been fast and unconventional, coming on the back of a highly promising fledgling career as a runner. It was not diabetes that derailed his running, Armitt stresses, but something even more difficult to overcome: a body goal that became an eating disorder.

He pinpoints a day in Lisbon, Portugal, as the start of his “downward spiral”. It was late 2019, and Armitt, then 17 and one of the best runners in the country, was representing Great Britain at the European Cross-Country Championships. “I was a bit taller and bigger, with more muscle,” he recalls looking around, comparing himself to the other runners. “I remember seeing the body type of the guys who were winning and being, like, ‘Oh, I need to look like that.’ ”

Though already lean, Armitt decided he needed to be 10kg lighter, and began restricting his intake. “I was calorie counting every day for two years, meticulously,” he says. “I couldn’t eat one blueberry over. It was really toxic.” Looking back, he reckons he was burning 4,000-5,000kcal a day while determinedly consuming far fewer. “I restricted [my intake] to 1,000 [kcal] a day for the first five weeks, and even after that, I’d never let myself eat what I actually needed.”

Injury stricken

Within weeks the teenager had dropped to 63kg, making him clinically underweight for his 6ft 1in height. He suffered from extreme fatigue and felt dizzy on short walks. “I was red-lining all the time,” Armitt says, remembering the added pressures during the Covid pandemic. “I was leading this completely isolated life,” he explains, “not wanting to do anything, and just worrying about my training and my eating.”

Having grown accustomed to diabetes, Armitt was used to analysing everything he ate. If his blood sugar was too high, he would inject a little more insulin. Too low, and he would be risking hypoglycaemia. Most people with type 1 diabetes have to take slow-acting insulin to keep their blood glucose levels steady. Armitt’s glucose stores were so depleted that he needed no insulin at all for two years. “My body was craving carbs so much that my levels stayed low, and I was living like I didn’t have diabetes.” This did not represent good glucose control but a state of chronic depletion.

The lack of available energy caused a gradual erosion of bone density. He began picking up stress fractures in his feet and hips. And yet there were times when, despite the physical frailties he was inflicting on himself, Armitt ran fast. Very fast.

“Occasionally there would be a day when I was really on it,” he says. “One such day, when I was 17, everything came together and I ran 14 minutes dead [at the 2020 Armagh International 5km].” This remains the sixth-fastest 5k of all time by an under-20 British male. Armitt thought to himself “Wow, I’m doing the right thing” – but soon the injuries and exhaustion returned. “I’d manage one good race a year and then be injured for the rest of the season.”

He didn’t know it at the time, but the 2021 European Cross-Country Championships, held in Dublin, Ireland, would be his last elite running race. Having raced bikes as a child, Armitt held ambitions in triathlon through his teens, and travelled to Spain shortly after the Euros for a cycling training camp. There, he crashed, fracturing his hip socket as he hit the tarmac. “I had five weeks on crutches, and I couldn’t really walk for 10 weeks,” he says. “After that, getting back to running was really, really difficult.”

The months that followed the crash ended up being one of the most mentally challenging periods of Armitt’s life, but they also brought a “turning point”, he explains. “I realised that I needed to start looking after myself and managing everything better. I think that was the defining moment where I realised my body couldn’t cope with all the injuries.”

It took more than a year for Armitt to fully recover from the broken hip. Tired of being in pain, he found himself “fed up” with running and triathlon, and lacking a purpose for his competitive energy. Then, in the summer of 2023, he watched the UCI World Championships in his hometown of Glasgow – the biggest ever edition of the event, spanning all disciplines – and an idea took root. “I didn’t tell many people,” he says, “but I thought, ‘Maybe I want to try and go into cycling.’”

New beginnings

At 21 years old, Armitt was a relative latecomer to bunch racing. He began as a cat-four racer and signed up to compete in regional events – “just whatever I could do,” he says, “as I was starting from scratch.” He then approached British racing outfit Project 1, who saw his potential and took him abroad, entering him into races in France, Italy and Belgium.

Armitt remembers one event in particular, the under-23 Trofeo Piva in Italy’s Venetian hills, as a watershed moment. Having taken up the day’s breakaway, he went solo with 50km to go. The move proved fruitless ultimately – he ended up finishing 41st – but it succeeded in turning the heads of a handful of professional teams, including one WorldTour scout, who made enquiries about his power numbers.

Armitt’s new career as a cyclist began to blossom. He increased his calorie intake to fuel long rides and was managing his diabetes normally with insulin injections. Aware of Novo Nordisk, the all-diabetic US team, he contacted them directly, and was invited to a testing camp in Tuscany, Italy, where he blew the coaches away. “In a test up the Col de la Madone, I did 450 watts for 27 minutes,” he says. “Power wise, I was a lot higher than most riders, but I don’t have their experience, or racecraft, or efficiency.”

His new team boss Vassili Davidenko disagrees. “His racing instincts are good,” says the Novo Nordisk manager. “After he came to the talent ID last July, we decided to throw him straight in at the Tour of Bulgaria in August with our development team, literally a couple of weeks later. He started racing aggressively immediately, achieved sixth on the final stage and eleventh on GC... in his first race. We took notice.”

Today, only 18 months after his first senior bunch race, Armitt is one of the most promising riders in his squad’s 20-strong roster. His blood glucose is regularly monitored by his team doctor, and his weight is now comfortably within a healthy range. The eating disorder of his running days is a distant memory, though he is aware of the risk of falling back into old behaviours. “I don’t count my calories anymore, and I have a much better relationship with food, but you still wonder, ‘What if I was a kilo lighter?’ ” he says. “You have days where you think, ‘Maybe I should just have more salad today.’ And then you think, ‘No, no, that’s silly.’ The thoughts are always there, it’s just trying to ignore them now.”

Reflecting on his troubled late teens, what lessons is he taking forward as he aspires to reach the WorldTour? “Looking back, you realise how obvious the mistakes are, but you can’t beat yourself up about them,” he says. “I know it was wrong, but it’s happened, and I’ve learned from it. I know not to let it happen again, and now I’ll carry that into the rest of my career.”

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 13th March 2025. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.