Why did you take on this challenge and choose the Riccarton McDonald’s drive-through as the route?
I dedicate my life to mountain biking, specifically on the longer distance side of things. So a lot of the events and challenges I do are super hard, but you learn that these things are all a mind-over-matter type of situation. It's never your body that goes out first. I couldn't tell you why, but this idea to see how long I could bike came up and doing it at a McDonald's. For the last year, the idea has been burning a hole in my head. I've told enough people about it, so I just had to go and get it done. Christmas Day is the one day of the year that it's possible because McDonald's closes.
Did the challenge interrupt your typical Christmas Day plans?
I guess it gave me a good excuse to escape all the family commitments. Of course, that's only a joke. I unfortunately had to miss spending time with the family to do this challenge. Instead, we just delayed it until Boxing Day. I’ve got mum, dad, a younger and older brother and the extended family. We usually spend the mornings as our core family, and then have a lunch and dinner with our extended family.
Were you worried security or someone from McDonald’s would stop you from completing the challenge?
I was a bit, yes. I kept my plans pretty quiet because if they didn't want it to happen, they'd be on high alert potentially. So I just turned up unannounced and went and did it.
The hardest part was the mental side of things. I knew I was physically capable of biking through 24 hours. There were so many unknowns doing something this bland and boring. It was in the middle of the night about 20 hours in when my energy levels were at an all-time low. It became super tough. I never gave myself the option to pull out, but I had no clue how I was meant to continue. I think it just came down to saying: ‘Okay, let's get this next hour done’. Then that slowly comes down to making it the next 30 minutes and then just the next corner. Just spin the pedals over one more time. It’s just about that small goal setting.
You live overseas mountain biking in North America and Europe from April to September each year. Tell me about that part of your life?
I'm a full-time mountain biker, and in New Zealand we are quite isolated. So to make it as a mountain bike athlete, you've got to base yourself within the mountain bike epi-centres. So it's mainly the EU, UK, USA and Canada. So in our winter in New Zealand, I escape and I head over to the summer in the Northern Hemisphere and live a full year of summer, just chasing mountains all over the globe. I started internationally competing in world cups and did fairly well at those – had a few top placings in the under-21s.
What other difficult mountain biking challenges have you completed?
I was doing a big bike packing loop in the Scottish Highlands a couple years ago, where I was just so depleted with no sleep. I was a few days in and got caught in a big storm in the middle of nowhere. I was quite close to being hypothermic. I just couldn't stop shaking, was wet, and couldn't warm myself up. It felt like quite a dire situation, but I managed to find a mountain hut and wait the storm out.
