‘Hong Kong to Wuhan’: pair tackle quarantine challenge with 919km stationary bike ride to raise money for charity

Confined to their flat for 14 days after returning from the UK, Britons Mini Maxwell and Laura Normand broke up the Covid-19-enforced quarantine by spending more than 30 hours on a stationary bike covering the distance (919 kilometres) from Hong Kong to Wuhan.

“We were asking, should we go home and face quarantine, should we not? But this was quite an exciting challenge to do when we got back and make our time go faster,” said Maxwell.

The pair were raising money for Feeding Hong Kong, a charity that collects food that would otherwise be thrown out, and distributes it to homeless people and other in-need groups.

“I was slightly apprehensive whether it was going to be possible,” said Normand. “I’ve only just bought my indoor trainer. Neither of us had much experience on it, but we started to work out if it’d be possible. ‘Well, it’s going to be horrific’, we thought, but if we’re going to raise money it’s got to be nuts.”

The pair pedalled in shifts – three hours on, three hours off. They aimed to average 25km/h but exceeded their expectations, which was just as well, given they started after finishing work on a Friday.

“I wrote the schedule and if we averaged 75km per session it would take us through to Sunday afternoon,” Normand said. “That’s when I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be hard’. We just had no idea, we had never done anything like this before.”