Blake Kelly, the man behind Unrestricted Isle Racing

Who is Blake? A firefighter on the Isle of Man who came to racing late, lives in a van to chase the Mountain Course, and is wired by his own admission to only feel alive when death is on the table. He builds his own bikes, films his own races, and gives away T-shirts because he can't stand taking your money for nothing.

Blake bought a ZX10 to celebrate landing the firefighting job. It was a dream bike for him, and it lasted about as long as it took him to figure out what it actually did. "It didn't matter what gear you were in," he said. "You opened the throttle and it spun the earth backwards underneath you. But… it was boring."

Speed wasn't the draw. A ZX10 hands you insane numbers for free, and free is exactly the problem. Climbing to 120 on a 600, when you've worked for it, really worked for it, that's the drug. The speedo was never the point. The earning of it was.

So he bought a Honda Grom to keep himself out of trouble..

Blake is not a prodigy who's been on a bike since he could walk. He came to it late. No racing family, no early money. He got his license around 2017-ish and almost the moment he did, he decided he was going racing, which on the Isle of Man is less of a leap than it sounds. "It's a strange place to grow up," he said. You can drive at 16, and within a few months sitting north of 100 mile an hour is perfectly normal. His earliest memories are standing by the road as a kid, waiting for Joey Dunlop to come through Ramsey. It still took his mum two or three years to come and watch him race, convinced he'd signed up for a kamikaze mission. Then she saw one and became his biggest supporter.

His training? Seat time and a YouTube degree. No academy. A little sports psychology, fitness from a mate who used to snowboard for Team GB, and a discipline to fine tune every little detail. Go out to test one thing, not to rip around and come back wondering if it felt fast.

"I only really get excitement if there's the potential of death," he said, completely matter-of-fact. He's had a couple of genuinely close calls and his immediate reaction, every time, is laughter. You have a close call, and you carry on. He describes a switch in his head that simply turns off. "If you're worried about what's going to go wrong, it will," he said. "If you go out with the confidence and the focus of just doing what you need to do, that's what you'll do."

It's the same wiring that makes him good at the day job. On the Isle of Man they barely fight fires, the place is too small and too well regulated for the big ones. What they end up handling most is car and bike crashes. Blake's a blue light driving instructor, does line rescue, leads the animal rescue team. He knows what danger looks like, but he lives for the ride.

Before he ever ran the Mountain Course, they sat him down at the newcomers' weekend and told him something he still repeats back like a warning label. This has to take over your life, or it will take your life.

Blake and his girlfriend Rebecca live in a van. Firefighting pays well and nearly all of it goes to the bike, so they've cut their outgoings to almost nothing and built a life small enough to fit around a race season. No kids, a small rescue dog, and a partner who's been beside him the better part of ten years, going back to a first date that was a ride-out with the lads with her on the back. She gets it, which may be the luckiest thing in this story. "It's quite a selfish sport," he admits, "and it does become obsessive."

I ask everyone I interview about the ride they will always remember. Blake told me about a green lane called St. Luke's, up through the valleys, the kind of trail you normally clear in about twenty minutes.

This time it took two and a half hours.

It was minus 12 on top of the mountain and the whole island had gone soft and silent under a total whiteout. He'd brought out two newer riders and one buddy, The center of the lane was pure ice. People kept going down, and every time somebody did, the rest stopped and dragged him back up, freezing and slow, because the deal was that everybody got to the top or nobody did. At a cattle grid one of the guys admitted he'd never crossed one, so Blake parked his own bike, walked back, and rode the bike across for him. In the two minutes that took, his bike went stone cold and refused to start.

They got it going. Then they pushed on through a foot and a half of untouched snow until the lane spat them out onto the TT course. Not a single tire mark in the snow, which is odd because on the island they grit the main roads first. They rode down into it anyway, through Barregarrow with drifts everywhere, over toward Kirk Michael, until something appeared out of the white in the middle of the road. It was the back of a sign. They rolled up, came around it, and read the front.

Road closed.

That's why it was perfect. Nobody was supposed to be there at all.

They made it to the local pub, sat by the fire, and laughed about it. Two on two-strokes fouling their plugs because the engines were too cold. Somebody out of fuel. The whole day held together with nothing but stubbornness. "A cracking adventure," he calls it.

I personally counted about ninety-six times in that story where a sane person turns around and goes home. Blake's review of every one was the same. "You just gotta keep going forward, don't you."

Blake warms up when he talks about his brand, Unrestricted Isle, that started as a way to sell a few shirts and hats, and it exists because he physically cannot take money off someone for nothing. "I really struggle with it," he said. "If someone wants to help, I'd like to give them something back." It doesn't make much, and that was never the point. It makes people feel part of it, and it has introduced him to more good people than he can count.

Where it's all pointed is the TT, and he figures two to three years. The Manx Grand Prix is the feeder, and such a feeder that if you win it you're banned for five years, because the only direction left is up. The TT is ten to fifteen miles an hour faster and stacked with professional teams, while everyone at his level is a privateer funding it through connections and a day job. We celebrate these riders like gods and then quietly ask them to starve their way to the start line.

The Takeaways

• For new riders. You can start late. No racing family, no early money, license in 2017 and straight at it. Granted I will be honest, it helps to be raised on the Isle of Man.

• For experienced riders. Chase the millimeters. Blake goes out to fine tune a single part of his riding skills, not the entire ride.

• For all of us. When shit goes sideways, remember eventually it will be a funny story you can look back and laugh at.