He's not one for rushing, but Doug Robinson has become noted for his steamroller approach to the triathlon finish line.
Occasional Sunday cycling buddy Rob Inkster puts it like this: "Doug has the ability to bring to cycling what the bulls bring to Pamplona.
He is like a runaway train ripping across the Montana plains.
In short, he is the tortoise amongst hares and we all know that story".
Another training partner, Alistair Madill: "One thing you can say about Doug, for a quiet chap, he is a cussed stubborn bugger.
"Nothing will stop him from crossing that finish line apart from being hit by a bus. Pity the bus".
So it was that in March last year, Robinson reached his goal of being able to run 5km and then decided to complete the 42.2km marathon that contributes a significant amount of the pain to Challenge Wanaka.
Ten months later, he completed the marathon, as part of the 226km event, the whole taking 12 hours 38 minutes.
Although it was his first long-distance triathlon and he had never run a marathon before, he was disappointed because he didn't finish in the top half of his 30-39 years age group.
"I need to drop another half an hour," he says.
"So I am aiming to break 12 hours at the next Challenge Wanaka."
You can tell by his tone he means it.
Robinson's attitude was developed playing rugby, a sport picked up in the United States, at Flathead High School aged 14, when he weighed 92kg. (Robinson now weighs 94kg but has weighed up to 120kg.) Rugby was very important to Robinson.
He worked hard at it and captained the school team.
"My old man was like, if you want to make something work, you get in and get it done," he says.
Importantly, the season didn't clash with his other sport, American Football, in which he played offensive guard for the Flathead Braves.
Robinson was a kid playing second-string hooker in a senior men's rugby team and sitting on the bench when the Flathead Moose won the Montana state championship.
He later became a prop and his university team, the Bozeman Cutthroats, won the state championship twice - once when he was about 21 and again when he was about 28 and the team captain.
Rugby inspired Robinson to design the distinctive tattoos that are now inked on his shoulders and back.
Rugby also earned him a nickname, Doug E. Fresh, which he refuses to explain.
Doug is not even his real name.
He's not letting much slip there either.
The way Robinson describes it, growing up in Montana was a bit like growing up around Wanaka, but with bears and wolves in the hills instead of sheep and rabbits.
"The main difference is there are trees in the mountains and there's no trees here.
"And there's things in the forests that will kill you. I like that part," he says.
Robinson established Kiwi connections at university in Montana, where he befriended Ranfurly man Bruce Paterson, who was living there with his US-born wife Kris.
And in 1998, a chance encounter with a man whose van had broken down in Montana provided the contacts to play prop for Timaru's Harlequin B club team for six months.
"That's one of the things I have always loved about rugby, is that camaraderie, that band of brothers thing.
"It makes it easy to travel and go to a new town and have a new set of friends," Robinson says.
In 2006, after moving to Wanaka, he played a season at prop for the Upper Clutha Merinos and then retired because of injury niggles.
But he didn't want to lose that smashed-up feeling.
"I just love feeling really shattered ... Nothing more than that.
"I just enjoy finishing and feeling like I can't do anything. Even with weightlifting, the best days were when I couldn't wash my hair afterwards," Robinson says.
Madill, a fellow architect, first convinced Robinson to take part in Challenge Wanaka in 2007, over too many beers.
Robinson started with the 180km bike and applied beer to his team-mates until they agreed to do the other bits.
On his second try, he did the 3.8km swim and the bike.
Then in January, he did the whole thing.
The seriously social beer-drinker even teetotalled for five weeks over the summer holidays.
He thinks he's lost between 20-25kg in the last year and is happy with that.
"I don't think I want to get out of the Clydesdale weight group because I want to beat skinny people.
"That's a nice feeling, passing the skinny people on their nice fast, flash bikes.
"That's an enjoyable pleasure," he says.
His goal for the Rohto Ironman 70.3 (Hawaii Half Ironman) today is a top-half age-group goal, of under 5hr 45min.
It's realistic because he achieved it at the Ashburton Half Ironman last year.
And next? "I want to swim with a great white shark."
