National Emergency Services Championships

The battle between the blue lights for the TT stripes!

Every year there is a National Championships for those working within the Emergency Services (either current career or retired) over 10 and 25 miles as well as a road race. Both are pretty hotly contested as it is often the same faces you see battling it out for Police, Fire or Ambulance as it is at the RTTC Championships in their club colours.


This year it was a long trip north to Ponteland after the relatively locally hosted Championships by Leicestershire FRS in 2016. Given the event fell amongst a busy period of racing I opted just to ride the 10TT as I had been racing down at Castle Combe on the Wednesday evening, just three days earlier (the 10TT is held on the Saturday afternoon and the 25TT on Sunday morning). Yes, it was a long way to go to ride 10 miles but it was important to me to represent the Fire Service as often we are under represented compared to our Police colleagues. I'm also keeping my eye on my main season goals this year, which are the TLI Cycling National TT and the World Amateur TT - both in August. Thus I stuck with the plan despite later thinking that I should have stayed and ridden the 25 on Sunday - whilst hindsight is a wonderful thing I know that it would have come back to bite me having already learned the lesson that too many races in a short period of time doesn't work well for me!


Ponteland appeared to be a really pretty little town with a couple of nice looking pubs, plenty of flowers and a decent sized leisure centre (with a lovely cricket field) which was our race HQ. The course was certainly rolling; one of those where it was difficult to find a rhythm and the surface wasn't the best but I've certainly ridden far worse this year! There were very few females in the field, which was a shame, so we were dotted throughout the men's field - this always makes attempting to catch your minute man interesting, if nigh on impossible! Having said that I had a junior in front of me, as the event also doubled up as a GS Metro Open 10, and I did manage the catch and the overtake by mile 3. However, I was also caught by my minute man by mile 4!

Not feeling particularly aero!

As seems to be a common occurrence since I started racing, my main competition was Liz Powell who rides for Mike Vaughn Cycles but on this occasion was riding for the Police. Liz has been National Emergency Services Champion for the past two years and was clear favourite to successfully defend this title for a third year running. Despite giving it everything I'd got the best I had on the day was good enough for silver, some 20 seconds adrift of Liz. However, I was some 2 minutes clear of Lisa representing Essex Police in bronze medal position.

Lovely glass trophy - Runner up 10TT

I do think that I am a rider that benefits from course familiarity. Riding a course in preparation for a race isn't always possible but you do get a better fell for it than just by driving around it. I would certainly take a different approach to this particular course if presented with the opportunity of racing on it again. Having said that weather conditions and traffic often alter your approach and race plan at the last minute so much to my disappoint it's not always possible to plan to the nth degree!


Our trip north also presented the opportunity to finally meet Harry Walker aka the man behind my wheels 'Mr. Revolver'! Harry lives locally and kindly came along to support. There will be more about Harry coming up in a future post so stay tuned...

Harry of Revolver Wheels