HE already cycles 40 miles a day to and from his work at Drax Power Station – now a York teenager is planning to pedal 250 miles to London in 24 hours.

Yasha Chechik, 19, of Heslington , wants to raise funds for a sick York youngster, Jamie Inglis, who needs to raise £250,000 for treatment in Germany for neuroblastoma, an aggressive childhood cancer.

Yasha is under no illusions about the scale of his task in reaching the capital so quickly. “This will be a physically and mentally gruelling challenge and by far the toughest I have ever undertaken,” he said.

“To put this into perspective, I will have travelled a distance equivalent to two to three Tour De France stages in less than a day.”

Yasha, who is a student at Durham University, said it took him an hour each way to get to Drax, where he has an internship this summer, but he had been cycling longer distances on Sundays, managing 135 miles last weekend in under nine hours.

He said Jamie was one of his sister Sonya’s classmates at Lord Deramore’s School, in Heslington, and he had decided to take up the challenge after hearing about the youngster’s battle against cancer.

He said Jamie had beaten his disease once, but sadly the cancer had come back. “Jamie’s immediate treatment will be radiotherapy and chemotherapy to try and get the disease under control.

“As we do not have any relapse treatment protocols in the UK, Jamie’s best chance of beating neuroblastoma is to travel abroad for treatment.”

Yasha said he planned to leave York at 3pm on August 18 and cycle through until late evening, when he would stop at Peterborough to grab a few hours’ sleep at a Holiday Inn, which was providing the accommodation on a complimentary basis, before resuming his journey in the early hours of August 19, hoping to arrive in The Mall by 3pm.

•Yasha has already raised more than £700 in sponsorship. Anyone wanting to support him should go to justgiving.com/yashachechik