Metheringham cycle racer joins in 24-hour indoor ride online for charity

This weekend Rebecca Durrell of Metheringham, who works at the Giant Lincoln cycle shop at Doddington Hall, will be joining fellow member of staff Gary Pollard and Doddington Cycling Club ambassadors Sarah Greaves and Mark West to take on a 24 hour indoor cycling challenge in the virtual world of ‘Zwift Cycling’.

They will each be riding a six hour indoor relay shift, all in the hope of raising as much money as possible for Lincolnshire Air Ambulance and St Barnabas Lincolnshire Hospice, both of which have suffered a significant loss of income due to the current lockdown.

Sarah-Jayne kicked off the challenge at 6pm yesterday (Saturday). Then after six hours of pedalling, she passed the virtual baton on to Rebecca at midnight, who then rode on her indoor trainer through to 6am this morning (Sunday.

She has now passed over to Mark who is also leading their weekly 9.30am Zwift Meet-Up with fellow cyclists.

Finally Gary will take the baton at midday to carry on until 6pm.

Rebecca was winner of the 2018 and 2019 Lincoln Grand Prix cycle races and races for the CAMS-Tifosi team. She filmed part of her shift on Facebook Live.

She said a massive thank you to everyone for their support so far, explaining: “We have taken on this challenge to raise funds for our struggling local charities during this time - the Lincs Air Ambulance and St Barnabas Hospice. We are currently at the £1,000 mark in donations but have set a stretch target of £2,000.”

She said afterwards: “My leg from midnight to 6am went well, although riding through the night was a shock to the system. I could really feel the fatigue kick at 5am as my body clock was totally out of sync! It made me appreciate all the more what shift workers go through, especially those on the front line at the moment!”

Rebecca covered 78 miles and 1,800m of climbing (all virtually of course) in the six hours.

They have been calling on the cycling community, friends and family to join in and support them via the app.

If you are a Zwifter, you can either ride alongside them at any time or join one of the scheduled Zwift group ‘meet-ups’.

They are riding laps of the Mega Pretzel (107km, 1642m of climbing). During the meet-up they will all stay together as a group, no-one will be dropped.

Rebecca said: “We’ve had some great interaction on the app, with over 25 people riding alongside Sarah-Jane on her six hour stint yesterday evening. We have another Meet-Up planned today at 12.15pm when Gary begins the last stint of the 24 challenge. The more the merrier!”

If you do not have Zwift, you can join in by cheering them on via the Giant Store Lincoln Facebook and Instagram updates.

Rebecca said: “I’m so proud of my colleagues who have risen to this challenge amazingly. I race semi-professionally so am used to the long training rides, whereas I don’t think they have ever spent longer than an hour or so on an indoor trainer! They are doing amazingly well and we’ve been blown away by people’s support and generosity in their donations!”

If you wish to donate visit their JustGiving fundraising page, at: bit.ly/24hrCharityZwiftathon