2011 Betfair LifeCycle Challenge

LifeCycle Challenge team, you are our heroes!

The LifeCycle Organisation was founded 12 years ago with the purpose of increasing awareness about Renal Disease. Money is also raised to improve the Renal Unit at Mater Dei Hospital and to increase the quality of life of patients. Hence, the LifeCycle Challenge was born and for 12 consecutive years dedicated teams of cyclists have taken on the challenge to ride 2000 km through Europe for 10 days.

This year, the 2011 Betfair LifeCycle Challenge set of from Prague on August 14th and arrived in Sarajevo 11 days later, with all but one original team member. On the first day the 21 cyclists were off to a hard start as they climbed several steep hills and covered 250 km as they cycled from Prague to Prostejov.

The 2011 Betfair LifeCycle Challenge cyclist covered 40-50 km each time before they stop to refuel on high calorie food to be able to continue and keep their energy levels high. Each day was also faced with different challenges, team members facing illness and fatigue, detouring that added several kilometres to the route and bad weather. However, this did not stop the dedicated team of cyclists who kept up the team spirit and continued their journey to Sarajevo.

On the 11th day the team left Mostar early and cycled the remaining 165 km through the Bosnian countryside until they arrived to Sarajevo where they stopped to get together with all the back-up team and other cyclists, locals as well as Maltese, when they were escorted by police to the heart of Sarajevo.

As the team members arrived to the finish line there were mixed feelings; many cyclists were glad that the challenge was over for this time while others expressed their disappointment for reaching the end.

In total the team cycled through 7 countries and covered 2000 km in 11 days for charity, the donations are still being calculated, update coming soon! Well done and congratulations to the 2011 Betfair LifeCycle Challenge team!