An avid cyclist has cycled a number of festive themed routes including the shape of a Christmas pudding as part of a 500km cycle challenge. Rebecca Laurel, 25, from Leicester, completed a 64km (40-mile) cycle route in the shape of a Santa sleigh with a reindeer on Christmas Eve and a 61km (38-mile) Polar Express themed route on Boxing Day.
Ms Laurel, a civil engineer, said she is almost halfway through the Festive 500 – a challenge to ride 500km between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, created by Rapha, a cycling clothing brand. “I started doing creative routes in 2020, the first one I did was a reindeer,” Ms Laurel told the PA news agency.
“It’s not in the rules that you have to do shapes, it’s just riding 500km. “But I did the challenge for the first time last year, and I thought it would be quite nice to do routes in the style in shape that I usually do them in.”. Ms Laurel, who created her routes on the Garmin Connect website, previously completed a skeleton-shaped route for a Halloween-themed bike ride.
This Christmas she has set herself several festive themed cycle challenges, which run through Leicester city centre. “The one I did on Christmas Eve was a Santa sleigh with a reindeer,” she said. “Santa’s sleigh was west of the city centre, and then the reindeer kind of went into the city centre and zig zagged around there. That was just over 40 miles.”.
