After 10 hours and 42 minutes in the saddle, Matthew Cooil completed a huge challenge of riding 366 kilometres on his turbo trainer.

He spent the entire ride (227.4 miles) within the confines of his family garage at home in Peel via the online cycling platform Zwift.

Beginning his epic challenge at 8am on May 2, the 16-year-ld QEII student anticipated the ride would take him 12 hours, but he sighted support from friends and family as the main reason he finished ahead of schedule.

’The support from everyone was phenomenal,’ he said. ’Their donations and words of encouragement really drove me forward when the fatigue came into play, so a huge thanks to them.’

To date, Matt has raised £2,150 and, following the deduction of JustGiving fees, this will be used to purchase vouchers from local businesses Bikestyle [North Quay, Douglas] and Dovecote Tearooms [Kirk Michael] for frontline workers in the health service.

’It was a really interesting experience,’ he recalled. ’I always enjoy testing myself, and this was certainly something different to my normal training. It was actually quite nice, especially with no racing in the near future, and a good opportunity to try new things.’

By using Zwift, he was able to ride with fellow local cyclists in the virtual world.

’The technology is such an asset now, I had a few guys ride with me which was really cool to see, especially being able to ride with a couple of my team-mates from the Utmost Isle of Man Junior Cycling team as we can’t train together at present.’

l Matthew Cooil’s JustGiving page will be closing in the near future, so get any last donations in quickly and support this tremendous initiative.