Keen cyclist, member of the local uni mountain bike club, founder of Women In Cycling Festival and all-round lovely person Emma Morris set herself a challenge of riding 100 miles of mountain bike trails, she faced more obstacles than you can imagine - but overcame it all to complete the challenge, and she came away smiling.

Emma writes... Last year whilst undertaking the obligatory COVID zoom quizzes, my friends and I decided we wanted to ride 100 miles whilst conquering all the great Peak district descents. Our first attempt was on Summer Solstice 2020, but some bad route planning and poor time management meant we only managed 81miles.

Convinced we had it in us, we planned for another attempt in late 2020 but a few mishaps got in the way. First, I broke nine bones by face-planting a car, and then my friend Diesel - jealous of my broken bones - decided to shatter his leg in a motocross accident. But, after all that we remained keen. All year we were chatting about the ride, refining the route and getting hyped! In another obstacle, our bikes took a bit of a beating during some seriously intense winter riding. My new Cotic Jeht not yet ready, Cotic were generous enough to lend me a Flaremax for the big day. We just had to hope Diesel's bike would survive the ride.

Setting off at 2.40am - with our bikes and bags fully loaded - it felt like we were going on a proper adventure and we were stoked! We reached 50k by 7am and we were feeling great. The furthest point was Glossop so we were never that far away from home. It was both awesome and depressing looking around the hills and seeing exactly where we had been and where we had got to go. We'd done Stanage, Bamford, Hathersage, Froggatt, Curbar, Baslow, Hassop, Longstone, Eyam, Shatton Moor, Bradwell before 10.30am.

As we were riding up Pindale, we decided to save energy and cut out Cavedale and Winnats Pass. BEST DECISION EVER! Instead we headed up Rushups Edge to Jacob's Ladder - boy was that painful when you're tired and carrying 21 hours worth of food and water...

About 100km in (around Potato Alley) I hit the wall- it was the biggest test of mental strength I've had. We were pushing as fast as we could but still going slowly. Tiredness and hunger hit me hard and I had a silly crash. All was fine though and we kept saying 'just keep pedalling and just keep smiling'.