A New Zealand triathlete has completed his first ironman in extraordinary circumstances - digging his own pool and mapping bike and running trails on his Matamata farm during lockdown.
Kieran McPherson used an excavator to dig the roughly 25m pool, which took two days to fill with a garden hose.
He then spent two weeks mapping a trail bike and running course.
"My coach Dr Will O'Connor and I decided we had to come up with a plan to get me through this lockdown, to keep motivation for training for future races," he said.
"I guess I came up with the idea and he said 'ahhhhhh I guess, I guess that'll be ok'."
The ironman equated to 152 lengths of the pool, 30 laps of a 6km mountainbike course and 17 times around a 2.5km running track.
"I've actually never ridden than 50km just on a straight mountainbike and I think my longest run to date was 30km as well, so both of those, the end of the run and the end of the bike were trips into the unknown."
The backyard lung buster took 13 hours.
There was no special treatment from the family, with McPherson doing the dishes the next day and cooking breakfast for his wife to thank her for her support.
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