Graham Macgregor-Smith is hoping to raise £10,000 for Action Medical Research

Graham Macgregor-Smith is hoping to raise £10,000 for Action Medical Research by pedalling 3,200 miles across the USA.

The 54-year-old will set off from San Francisco Bay Area, California on Saturday, July 29 and will arrive in Battery Park, Manhattan on Monday, August 28.

Graham explained how he was always a keen cyclist as a child but admits he was distracted by four-wheeled vehicles once he passed his driving test at the age of 17.

He said: “I didn’t take up cycling again until I looked in the mirror one day in the early 90’s.

"I was in my thirties by that stage, and I really didn’t like what I saw. So I bought a mountain bike and a second-hand road bike in an effort to get fit.”

Spurred on by a friend who once rode the Tour de France route one day ahead of the pro-peloton (a distance of 2,200 miles), Graham has been training hard for the last few months with long rides in the Surrey Hills.

An Action supporter for more than a decade, Graham hopes to raise £10,000 for the charity.

He continued: “When my son was three weeks old he spent five days in an oxygen tent with an acute bout of Bronchiolitis. This was a very fraught time for my wife and I, so we identify very much with the work that Action does.”

Action Medical Research is a UK-wide children’s charity which funds research to tackle the disease.

Set up in 1952, it helped introduce the first polio vaccines in the UK, developing the use of ultrasound in pregnancy and testing the rubella vaccine.

The charity is currently funding research into conditions including asthma, prematurity, epilepsy, meningitis, cerebral palsy, brain cancer and some rare and distressing conditions.