McCall, who fronted Channel 4′s Big Brother and currently hosts ITV1′s The Biggest Loser will be riding in Davina’s DIVA100,  from Cowdray Park in Midhurst, Sussex, on Sunday 8 May. The event, which is being supported by bike brand Specialized, will offer a two routes – a 100km challenge or a shorter 50km course. McCall says that she caught the cycling bug after doing Sports Relief’s John O’Groats to Land’s End ride last year. “I’ve become a cycling bore since then,” she says, “but I love it with a passion. It’s an affordable, sociable way to keep fit and doesn’t have to be competitive.”

Davina reckons she's become a bike bore.

“I’ve been involved with Action Medical Research since I was a child, but this is my first cycling event for the charity. I hope lots of ladies saddle up and join me for this new fundraiser. It’s going to be a fun day out and a great way to help such a special charity raise much-needed funds.”

“We already put on a range of popular cycling events each year, but the majority of participants are male,” explains Action Medical Research’s Sarah Stevenson. “We decided to introduce a more female-friendly event to encourage new cyclists to join us.”

Cyclists participating in Davina’s DIVA100 will be raising money to help fund medical research into conditions affecting babies and children. Research currently being supported by Action Medical Research includes work around meningitis, epilepsy, cerebral palsy and premature birth, as well as some very rare and distressing conditions that severely affect children.

Entry costs £28 and you will also need to raise a minimum of £50 in sponsorship. To find out more and to sign up click here

Last year, Cav looked to be in with an excellent shout after a sensational Tour de France in which he took six stages, became the first Briton to wear the leader’s pink jersey at the Giro d’Italia and won the Milan-San Remo classic. Despite this he lost out to ageing – he’s one year younger than me… – Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs. Giggsy is, undoubtedly, a brilliant footballer but 2009 wasn’t by any means his best year ever. It felt more like a lifetime achievement gong.

This year Mark has, after a slow start, had another pretty fine season – five stages at Le Tour and becoming only the second British rider to win the points jersey at the Vuelta a Espana – so he should again be in with a chance of winning. My, pretty safe, bet is that he won’t.

Vote for me!

Cycling doesn’t really register in the minds of the wider public. Only two cyclists have ever won the award – Tom Simpson in 1965 and Sir Chris Hoy in 2008. Formula One, athletics, boxing, Winter Olympic sports and football obviously mean more to Brits than bikes. Is Amy William’s skeleton gold more deserving of an award than Emma Pooley’s World Time Trial gold?

Of course, it could be argued that it’s a pointless award – although most recipients do seem to be genuinely moved when they win – and then there’s the whole ‘Sport’ and ‘Personality’ thing. (Cav is one of the few who qualifies for the latter.) As a cycling fan I would like to see Mark win, but he’d probably have to win the Tour de France for that to happen. I’ll vote for him, of course, but then there’s also part of me that’d love to see darts legend Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor win it too!

Car drivers thought that only mad peasants rode bikes and cyclists would argue that anyone who needed an internal combustion engine to move their wheels was an evil, planet destroying lunatic. Six of one, half a dozen of the other…

Times, of course, change and now cyclists and drivers live together like one happy sitcom family…okay…they don’t but we mainly, kind of, get on. Or get on with it. That’s mainly because – and whisper this quietly – a huge number of bike riders also drive cars. And vice versa.

You already know this, of course, as you probably also have a car. Sure, you’ll use the bike whenever you can but you can’t take a fridge to the dump on a Colnago can you? (If you say yes the I want pictures.) Anyway, the point of all this waffle – and there is one. Sort of – is my purely anecdotal evidence that bikes and cars are getting ever more entwined.

First up, I saw this article by Top Gear’s James May – a man who, you might think, would be as much a fan of cycling as he would be of speed cameras. It turns out, though, that TG’s Captain Slow is a massive fan of the bicycle. “The bicycle might just be the greatest of all inventions,” he says. “It empowers the human machine.” couldn’t have put it better.

But more than May’s article (and, incidentally, TG’s Richard Hammond also rides. No proof that Clarkson does) I saw ‘compelling’ evidence of bike/car synergy at two car dealerships last weekend. Car dealers are struggling to flog their wares with latest figures from The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders indicating that new car sales fell by 22 per cent in October. Once they would have used fields of burning wheat and a soft rock soundtrack to boost sales, but my dodgy finding is that they’re using bicycles…

Driving – sorry not riding – past a local Audi dealer I noticed that the centre-piece of the showroom was an A6 estate complete with a Specialized Roubaix sitting on top. A day later, and this time on my bike, my head was turned by a Scott Speedster proudly strapped to the roof a brand new BMW 120d. The message is obviously buy this car and you can be cool enough to own a road bike. Or maybe there are some special offers on: Free luxury German motor with this two-wheeler…

Team Cycling Plus will be updating you each week with the highs and lows of their training as part of the team. This week Kay gets excited…

Team member: Kay Bowen

36 year old Kay from Southampton is a very active person. She overcame thyroid cancer last year which has inspired her to try a whole host of new activities, including sailing, tennis, skiing and triathlons. As a triathlete, she already does a lot of cycling, but is keen to work on this aspect of her training. Her goals are to sustain longer distances and to go on a cycling holiday

After a complicated emailing conversation with Wiggle, and a box arriving to put my bike in, the lovely Wiggle man agreed that Rob could drive there as it is near his work and sit in the car park while they took my bike into their top secret workshop full of elves and replace the forks. It was like Christmas day, as when he arrived home he not only had my bike for a happy reunion but also a new Verenti branded set of bib shorts and a top, which I was so excited about that I wanted to wear them to bed.  I have never been a big clothes shopper, and only recently remembered that you could buy clothes and shoes in places other than Sainburys and Tescos. But I am beginning to see how cyclists get excited about gadgets, apparel, spokes and other bits in ways that some women do about shoes. I was asked to stick my leg in the air in the manner of a horse being shod today for a man in a farm shop to look at my cleats. I only went in to buy a peach, not be measured up for a saddle. On to the cycling.

Sunday I found myself in Wales, and went along to a ‘cycle circuits’ class at a nearby Esporta. It was tough but fun, a short sharp shock in the morning and I worked hard on the bikes, with gears set to simulate a tough climb. I followed that with a swim, and as it is a 25m pool, Rob suggested I time myself to get a realistic time for the 600m swim for West Wight Tri. I was delighted with 14.45 as I had put down 17 minutes, so will need to renegotiate a swim slot as that is how they decide your start time in triathlons in pools, the quicker you are, the later you start. If I got really good at swimming I could be finished before I started.

I really enjoyed my two hour training ride on Saturday morning with Claire, she has entered herself for the West Wight too and we did 49km in just under two hours with as many hills as I could find, as the Isle of Wight is hilly and I think we need to be well prepared. Claire is a very fit PE teacher and ex basketball player and has done triathlons for a while so is a great training partner, although even she managed to fall off her bike sideways whilst we were going nowhere. I think she did it to encourage me. I stopped at the farm shop a mile from home and bought a banana and a peach from the ‘slightly over ripe’ box for 20p! That was bargain refuelling, cheaper than energy bars! After leaving my bike at home I did a transition to a run, 7.5km, down to the sailing club, where in a yet further complicated ordeal of logistics for Rob he was meeting me with my gym bag, which had a change of clothes in it. Rob was there, but the bag was at home, so I sat sweating gently for a couple of hours in my running kit, glad of the sea breeze to waft the odour away. Apologies if you live on the Isle of Wight and wondered what the smell was.

Despite not getting in my usual hours early on in the week, due to visitors and  sports days and concerts, I am really pleased with how I have used the time I have had to get some great effort going in my training. Its the school summer holidays now, so we have a freer timetable to get in those hours doing all three disciplines.

Who are Team Cycling Plus?

Team Cycling Plus powered by Verenti are readers Andy Ward, Kay Bowen, Malcolm Ratcliffe and Sam Shaw. We’ll be following them in the magazine for the next few months as they train towards their personal cycling goals under the guidance of Team Wiggle’s Ben Simmons and we will be publishing their weekly trials and tribulations here too. For regular updates check our twitter page twitter.com/cyclingplus and the Team Cycling Plus facebook page.

You can follow BikeRadar on Twitter at twitter.com/bikeradar and on Facebook at facebook.com/BikeRadar

That means every bit of kit is used thoroughly for the purpose it was intended and, occasionally, for a few things it wasn’t. As well as the Cycling Plus staffers, we have a trusted team of testers including mile munchers, tech heads and speed freaks like Lowenna Smith, Pete Giddings and Dan Joyce.

How we test

We test every bike and product in the UK on one of our test routes in Bristol and Bath, the Mendips, the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales over real-world terrain and conditions that you’ll encounter day in, day out.

Each bike and product tested is ridden as many times as it takes for us to feel 100% at ease with our final judgement by a variety of expert testers and trusted real-world riders.

We combine ride testing with empirical testing and analysis wherever necessary to give you the true picture of how products perform.

We check all claimed facts and measurements after our initial ride tests so that no preconceptions cloud our judgement, and we test the bike as a whole – not merely the sum of its constituent parts.

Our verdicts are the results of hours of debate among C+ testers – not just one journalist’s view – to give the most accurate and considered judgements possible.