Cyclist Beats Heat, Dogs and Illness to Finish 4,200-mile Ride

Cancer patient Jane Tomlinson pedalled her bicycle into Battery Park in lower Manhattan yesterday morning, completing an arduous 4,200-mile ride across America almost exactly six years after she was given six months to live.

"I thought it was going to be a bit of an adventure, but it turned out to be a bit of an ordeal," said Ms Tomlinson, 42, at the end of a trip from San Francisco that included temperatures of 38C (100F), dog attacks and a run-in with the police. "It was very difficult, but it's just good to be here."

The 63-day ride, which began at the Golden Gate bridge, was almost abandoned two days ago when Ms Tomlinson's condition worsened. Instead, she made it over the Brooklyn Bridge into New York, adding the transcontinental journey to a list of records that includes being the first cancer patient to complete a full official triathlon and the first person to run a marathon while on chemotherapy.

The American trip has been widely reported as the greatest feat of endurance undertaken by someone with terminal cancer. Ms Tomlinson, a former hospital radiographer who has been diagnosed with advanced metastatic breast cancer, is attempting to raise £1.25m for British and American charities working with cancer patients and children.

Stopping at the White House earlier this week, she received a handwritten letter from Tony Blair praising her fundraising efforts.

In his blog on the BBC website, Ms Tomlinson's husband Mike described how his wife and her two fellow riders were repeatedly sprayed with road chippings as they rode through Colorado, and were followed for 90 minutes by police who pulled them over and told them to ride on the hard shoulder.

"The police officer was belligerent and not wanting to be arrested we agreed with him, so as not to give him an excuse for further action; his manner was spoiling for a fight; courtesy was at a minimum, it was certainly not a pleasant experience," wrote Mr Tomlinson, who has been following the cyclists in a support vehicle with the couple's nine-year-old son Steven. At another point a pickup truck driver threw a Coca-Cola bottle at the cyclists, he said.

Dogs also proved an unexpected problem. "We've been tense and scanning the properties as we approached to see where the dogs were running free," Ms Tomlinson told one reporter.

"Probably I wouldn't have come if I'd have realised quite how bad it was going to be."