Ben & Josh’s Xmas Everesting Challenge Begins December 19th

10 and 11-year-old brothers Ben and Josh Cleave from South Wales are taking on a big challenge for a great cause. And they’re doing it all on Zwift, during their Christmas holiday!

The plan: complete an Everesting challenge of accumulating 8,848m of climbing during their school Christmas holidays (December 19th-January 4th), all to raise funds for brain tumor research. They were inspired to take on this challenge after hearing that their 7-year-old cousin Jessica is undergoing her second fight against an aggressive brain tumor:

“We were told by Mum and Dad that Jessica has to start chemotherapy again to try and shrink the brain tumor she has. We wanted to do something to help and both love cycling, so thought we’d try and set a tough challenge in order to raise some money to help.

We heard about pro cyclists ‘Everesting’ throughout 2020, but didn’t think our parents would let us do this, so with the Xmas Holidays coming up, thought we could do it over the Xmas holidays instead…”

Ben and Josh Cleave

Their epic journey will involve cycling more than 400km in total distance and climbing more than 500m per day on their smart trainers using Zwift. Using a variety of mountainous courses, the boys will cycle every day in order to accumulate the 8,848m of altitude gain required to reach the summit. Given the boys’ young age this will be a real challenge!

The challenge will start on Saturday Dec 19th 2020 and end on Sunday January 3rd 2021.

Join Ben and Josh

The boys will be raising money for the Brain Tumour Research charity, in hopes of funding 1 day of research into brain tumors, which currently costs £2740 (~$3650US). They’ve already almost met that goal, but that doesn’t mean the giving should stop! (Zwift CEO Eric Min already donated, and the boys wanted us to make sure Eric knows they’re very thankful for his support!)

If you’d like to donate, visit their Just Giving page >

You can also follow their Facebook page, where status updates will be posted. If you’d like to ride along with the boys during any part of their challenge you can simply follow them on Zwift then click to Ride With them in-game. Even better, from their Facebook page, find a post explaining how to join the organized Meetup for a particular day! Here’s a post where you can sign up to join them on December 20th, the 2nd day of their challenge.

They recently received this video from Geraint Thomas himself, who looks to be joining the boys for some portion of their journey:

We love Ben and Josh’s willingness to work hard for a great cause, and we’re sure the Zwift community will come out and support them as well. Ride on, boys! See you on course!