At college I joined a triathlon club which I enjoyed until I suffered a bad injury breaking my jaw and arm in a cycling accident. I took a year away from sport and then in 1985 I joined the Fire Service. As I had not passed my driving test I cycled from Liverpool to Manchester every day for the next few years clocking up a lot of miles.

In 1990 I joined a local cycling club and took up racing. Over the next few years I aced all over Europe with the Great British Fire Service team but found that I enjoyed time trailing more than road racing. I became the National Fire Service time trial champion between 1992 and 1998.

In 1998, while racing in France, I met Sabine and racing took a back seat and family life took over. In 2003 I moved to Manchester so my cycle to work was now only 3 miles and that was about the only exercise I did until in 2009 I joined a group of work mates attempting a 1 million meter charity row taking 24 hours. We had two rowing machines and as many Fire fighters as we could get to complete the challenge.

In 2010 I entered BIRC and finished 7th with a time of 6.50. I was totally blown away by the experience and set myself a goal of reaching 6.40. By following a few different training plans I reached my goal at BIRC 2012. Since then I have raced at most of the major championships and in 2013 I managed to get to Boston and race at the Worlds. This was not my best ever race, but I finished 3rd and set myself a new target of a World title.

Who knows if I will ever achieve it, but in November 13 I was lucky enough to be offered a place with Q-Power and started training towards my goal.