I have a family friend who has been going through a very tough time over the past few years with one of their kids having a serious illness. I’d been thinking for a while that I’d like to do something to raise some money to help them and other charities that have supported them, and came up with a good/terrible (depending on your point of view) idea last week…

I and three other similarly mad people are going to spend 24 hours between us continuously riding an assault bike, in a bid to raise £5,000. For anyone who thinks this sounds easy, an assault bike is considerably tougher to deal with than riding a normal exercise bike or a spin bike.

The current plan is that on the first weekend in February over a 24 hour period, we’ll take turns of half an hour cycling and 1.5 hours rest time in rotation, and we’re aiming to beat a total of 10,000 calories burned on the bike over this time as well. Additionally, we’re challenging ourselves to reach a total of 5,000 burpees completed over the 24 hours.

We’re raising this money to help Ellie’s family and to donate some money to Team Jak who do a lot of fantastic work to help children, and families of children, with cancer. This is Ellie’s story:

Ellie, a pupil of Deans High School in Livingston, would be like many other 12 year old girls but for one thing. Since 5 years ago, aged 7, Ellie has been fairly ill and within the past year she has been diagnosed with a malignant pineoblastoma - a fast growing tumour in the brain. While there is treatment available for this, the location of the tumour and the number of tumour deposits mean that it is not feasible to remove the tumour from Ellie's brain.

Over the past year, Ellie has been through a lot of treatment. So far, she has been through:

* 32 doses of radiotherapy treatment

* 10 operations - some to diagnose the tumour, some to help with fluid on the brain and some to help with feeding her and administering drugs.

* She is now undergoing a type of intensive chemotherapy which needs her to stay in hospital for several weeks at a time due to the recovery period.

For the past year, the Oncology Ward at the Sick Kids Hospital in Edinburgh has become a second home for our family. Throughout all of this Ellie has been incredibly brave and courageous, keeping her sense of humour when many people would have lost theirs. She is still enjoying creating her art when she is able to. Before the chemotherapy, Ellie chose to have her head shaved and donated her hair to the Little Princess Trust.

If you could donate even a small amount, we (and what’s left of our legs afterwards!) would all be incredibly grateful! We’ll be posting some updates with training before the event, and will have updates during the event itself. Every little donation helps :-)