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UK end to end dash for charity

Ten British cyclists plan to spend five days in June dashing from one end of the country to the other in an effort dubbed The Race Against Time to raise GBP20,000 to support AIDS orphans and the terminally ill in some of South Africa's poorest townships.

Touring cyclists typically take a week or two to cover one of the routes between Britain's most southerly point at Land's End and its most northerly at John O'Groats, but these riders, nine men and one woman, plan to do it faster to reflect the urgency of the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa.

Newsreader Jon Snow of Britain's Channel 4 News has thrown his support behind The Race Against Time. Snow is a keen cyclist himself, and passionate about South Africa, a country which is being ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. In South Africa, one person dies every 15 seconds from the illness. "By the time the riders have come to the end of their 5-day journey, 28,800 people will have succumbed to the AIDS virus across the continent" said Snow, adding that in South Africa alone there are currently more than half a million AIDS orphans.