The Southend Junior Bikeathon will be taking place on Sunday 13th May and kids still have the chance to sign up and raise some money while having fun exercising.
The event will take place at Priory Park and participants are encouraged to complete as many half mile laps as they can in two hours. All of the money raised for the event will be donated to Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research.
Alan Meredith, one of the event’s organisers said: “It means a great deal to the children to take part in something like this, they love it and parents can be reassured it’s a fully marshalled route inside the park. It’s a marvellous way of raising money.
“Families can come and make a day of it and use the park’s facilities after.”
Terry Joyce, Chairman of the Southend branch of Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research said: “We want as many children and schools to enter as teams. We can easily accommodate up to 400 youngsters and hope to raise a lot of money.
“The work the charity does is just outstanding. They are researching all types of blood cancers their causes and treatment for both adults and children.
“Their latest venture is a trials accelerator programme to push forward clinical trials of new drugs. There are 13 centres of excellence and work going on in individual hospitals but now one centre in Birmingham is going to control and collate all the information and recruit people across the country for trials. Previously centres had difficulty completing trials as they couldn’t always recruit enough volunteers.
”We really believe in the cause and hope children will help us raise some money.”
Collette Kemp, from Cycle Southend said: “Cycling has so many benefits – health both physically and mentally, reducing congestion and for the environment.
“We’re trying to get people into good habits doing daily exercise and if you do that as a child it’ll continue as an adult. This also works with pester power when children nag their parents to take them out on their bikes and all end up having fun.
”They love the competitiveness of an event like this.”