Seven Get on Their Bikes!

Hydratight staff never let tasks daunt them - and that was certainly true of seven intrepid cyclists from the Walsall HQ on March 29.

The seven - six current and one former Hydratight members - spent their Sunday cycling over 100 miles for charity!

Two hundred riders, started by Mark Beaumont, the Guinness world record holder for cycling round the world, set out from Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre Outdoor Show 100 on a 100-mile ride around the Warwickshire countryside and back to the NEC.

The Hydratight team - Jason Barnard (global technician competency manager), Simon Beviss (Enerpac project engineer), Marc Holland (Morgrip technician), Paul Faulkner (UK and Norway general manager), John Brittle (key project coordinator), Alan Jones (global support engineer) and Heather Gray (credit control and risk supervisor, UK and Export), with former company member Graham Archer, spent nine and a half hours - seven and a half hours of them actually cycling - to complete the course.

"It was a tough day, but it was worth it: so far we have raised over £1,000 for Action Medical Research," said team leader Paul and we averaged around 14.5 miles an hour throughout the day and eventually covered 105miles."

Only Paul and Graham had done any distance cycling before: "They cycled from Land's End to John O'Groats last year, 75 miles a day for two weeks. The rest of us were relative novices: we all trained for a month before the ride," explained Jason Barnard.

"This was the first time we had all entered a race together and was the most any of us had cycled in a day."

The run was organised to raise money for Action Medical Research, one of the UK's leading medical charities, which over the past 60 years has been instrumental in the development of some of the most significant breakthroughs in recent medical history, from a UK polio vaccine to ultrasound scanning in pregnancy and the discovery of the importance of folic acid in pregnancy.

"It's an amazing charity and we were proud to raise money for it," Paul added. "So far we're up to the £1,000 mark, with more to come." You can sponsor Paul and the team by clicking to www.action.org.uk/sponsor/teamhydratight