Rachel Anderson picks up the phone somewhere between Leicester City’s King Power Stadium and Milton Keynes
Her knee is throbbing, the result of six days of riding long distance across the UK between football stadiums in England. For now, she’s putting her knee pain to the back of her mind; she’s got another three days on the road to go yet.
Anderson is cycling between all Premier League and Women’s Super League football stadiums to raise money for Motor Neurone Disease research, after the illness took her dad’s life two years ago. Both football fans – and Anderson a footballer herself – this challenge was a way to raise money to fight the disease, to test her own resilience on the bike and to honour her football-mad dad, Mike.
So far, the 32-year-old has been to Lee Bridge, Anfield, Sunderland and Newcastle, but the highlight so far was seeing Old Trafford, the home of her team Manchester United. She still remembers going to her first football match with her dad as a shy ten year old, draped in a Man Utd t-shirt to watch her team play Sheffield United. She hasn’t forgotten that first experience of team mentality, in amongst the buzz of the stadium.
“I just remember watching all of the Man United players warming up and being mesmerised by Wayne Rooney and all of the players, and how good they were,” Anderson tells Cycling Weekly. “Seeing that in person and the energy of everyone around me was just completely different.” She was hooked.
Anderson isn’t afraid of doing hard things. She’s a footballer who rationalised that her pitch-strong legs would translate into cycling stamina. And it’s working out well for her so far, despite only picking up a bike six months ago.
I ask her what she’s learnt so far as a relative beginner to cycling. She said a fear of hill climbing was her main concern before hitting the Yorkshire Dales, but that the satisfaction of scaling the hills soon put an end to the pain of climbing them.
“You look back and it’s like, oh, I’ve done that, and I’ve managed it, so kind of proved to myself that I am capable,” she says.
“I know I’ve had moments where I’ve been in like the rain and the wind and hated every second of it, but then ten minutes later when the sun came out, I kind of forgot about that. It’s almost like even like the worst times, they do get better. I was just thinking when the sun came out, and then the rain hit again, that the bad times will pass, and you can get through them.”
She used Komoot to help her connect all the stadiums together, breaking the route into days, country lanes, roads and b roads. “There has been a couple of dodgy roads that’s taken me down, or like the canal path that’s really bumpy, but overall I think it’s been pretty good. It’s worked out pretty well.”
Aside from accidental canal side off-roading, Anderson has only suffered one truly bad diversion so far. Mid way through a tunnel between Chester and Liverpool, she realised she really should not be there. Police were waiting on the other end – as was a whole afternoon of rain.
After a particularly tough day on the bike, her family were waiting in a campsite on the other end ride, a reminder of who she’s riding for: her dad, Mike.
“Receiving a diagnosis of motor neurone disease is unbelievably hard news,” Anderson explains on her Just Giving page. “There is no cure. There is no effective treatment. Average life expectancy is 1-3 years from onset of symptoms.”
Anderson’s dad gave her football, a legacy she’s keeping alive with every mile clocked on her bike.
“He was just my biggest fan,” Anderson says of her dad. “I started playing football when I was seven, he took me to all of the matches, drove me to all of the sessions. I remember growing up…I just sensed how proud he was of me, watching me play football. He played semi-professional back in the day, we’ve always watched football together, and that I thought it’d be a good way of remembering him.”
Returning the topic to cycling, I ask her if she’s got a taste for long distance riding now.
“At the moment I don’t want to see my bike ever again,” Anderson says, exhausted by the test so far.
She waits for a second before continuing: “but there are stadiums in Europe…”
To donate to Anderson’s fundraiser for The Motor Neurone Disease Association, you can click here.
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