University staff have pedalled their way to third place in the Colchester Workplace Cycling Challenge.

The competition, run by a national cycling organisation, took place over a period of three weeks in October. 400 people from 34 local organisations took part, some of whom hadn't cycled in more than a year. 407 people logged a total of 2,277 trips, equating to more than 18,560 miles.

Despite cycling more miles (6244), than any other organisation in the competition, the university only took third place in the 350+ staff category, because the results were based on the percentage of staff participating. 5.6% of university staff took part compared with 17.6% of staff at Colchester Sixth Form College and 7.7% at Essex County Council.

At the university, sports centre staff came out top in percentage terms of staff taking part with 40.9% (10/22) cycling 633 miles. They were closely followed by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, ISER, with 34.5% (22/58) cycling an impressive 1199 miles. This was the largest number of miles cycled by any department.

Mega cycling brownie points went to Tom Cudmore from Biological Sciences who cycled the most miles of any individual at 589. He was followed by Mandy Gray (193 miles) and Lucinda Platt from ISER with 191.