This article was originally published in Cycling Weekly's print edition as part of the long-running MY FITNESS CHALLENGE series.
Growing up in Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania, Iffat Tejani would notice other children riding bikes but could only dream of joining in. “None of us girls ever got on a bike,” she says, speaking to me by video call from her Hertfordshire home. “We were sporty and would play rounders, but girls were not allowed to cycle – it would have been frowned upon.” Aged 16 Tejani relocated to the UK with her family; at 20 she married and set about raising a family of her own. Only with the onset of a health crisis, 17 years later, did her long-dormant dream of cycling reassert itself in her mind.
