Pippa Middleton to cycle 3,000 MILES across the U.S. on epic charity bike ride with brother James

Pippa Middleton is set to cycle 3,000 miles across the United States as part of the Race Across America challenge.

The Duchess of Cambridge's younger sister, 30, will be joined by a team including her brother James, 27, and six other individuals, in aid of the Michael Matthews Foundation, according to .

The charity ride will kick off in Oceanside, California, on Saturday, with participants expected to arrive in Annapolis, Maryland, 12 days later.

The ‘ultra-endurance’ event promises to be a challenge even for ultra-fit Miss Middleton, who regularly takes part in charity races. In the race’s 32-year-history less than 200 individuals have successfully completed the event.

The cyclists will climb more than 100,000 vertical feet over the course of the route, and will likely be biking on very little sleep in order to reach the finish within 12 days.

Also on the Middletons’ team is James Matthews, who runs the charity that the team is riding for.

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The Michael Matthews Foundation is an educational charity was established in memory of Mr Matthew’s brother, who died on a descent from Mount Everest in 1999. At 22 years old, he was the youngest Briton to ever reach the summit.

It is unknown how much the team has raised for the foundation, but they must have had their fundraising hopes set high. According to the Race Across America site, it costs each rider approximately $20,000 to participate.

It seems Miss Middleton has been training for the gruelling event for some time. In her now-cancelled column for the Daily Telegraph in January she discussed how clip-in shoes have the propensity to let one pedal faster.

She wrote: ‘The major advantage of clip-in (or ‘clipless’, their proper and confusing name) bikes…is that because the shoe is attached to the pedal you can pull up as well as push down.

‘This makes a huge difference to power and efficiency and goes some way to explaining the warp speed of many urban cyclists.’

Miss Middleton is no stranger to charity sporting events and races. In fact, the sporty stunner took part in an endurance ski race in Switzerland in 2012.

She also participated in the Highland Cross in 2011 " a fell run that is held in Scotland.

Race Across America was officially started in 1982 as the Great American Bike Race. In the last four years, it has raised more than $4million cumulative dollars for charity.

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