We\u2019ve seen a lot of weird and wacky ways to wrap up the Festive 500 over the years. The challenge, to ride 500 km between Christmas and New Year\u2019s, naturally brings out a bit of weirdness in anyone willing to take on the miles. But Matthew Fairbrother\u2019s Fast Food 500 could take the cake. Or, er, fries.<\/p>\n
The Fast Food Festive 500<\/p>\n
The New Zealand rider set a new bar for ridiculous Festive 500 rides by completing the entire distance within the confines of a McDonald\u2019s drive through. You can check out the ride and stats on Strava<\/a>.<\/p>\n We all know someone who has found a weird way to finish the Festive 500. I thought a friend had the crown for most repetitive when he rode the entire 500 over hundreds of 1.9km laps around UVic\u2019s Ring Road a few years ago. But Fairbrother\u2019s loop is much more mind-numbingly small and repetitive.<\/p>\n For those counting, it took roughly 2650 laps to make up 500km. The McDonald\u2019s was closed for the holiday, giving the Kiwi rider a 30-hour window to finish the milage. That also meant that no, there were no fries with that.<\/p>\n Fairbrother shared that he switched directions every four hours, just to keep it (and his tires) \u201cfresh.\u201d He also explains that, while the distance is accurate, that elevation gain is probably a function of a small sensor quirk magnified by a staggering number of laps.<\/p>\n \u201cMentally, it\u2019s relentless\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re thinking this sounds kind of mad, Fairbrother says that\u2019s kind of the point.<\/p>\n \u201cMy life is usually built around goals, purpose, and process. Big projects with a thousand moving parts; logistics, terrain, weather, risk, timelines and always needing to think five steps ahead,\u201d the Kiwi explained in his post. \u201cEvery now and then it\u2019s nice to strip all of that back and do something purely for the sake of it. With no meaning, no destination to reach. Just turning up and letting my stubbornness do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n The monotony and complete lack of reward ends up being the reward.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat makes a challenge like this weirdly appealing is the simplicity. Physically it\u2019s manageable, mentally it\u2019s relentless. The same loop, the same sights and a million different thoughts, keeping the peace becomes the real challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n The most inward challenge in a long history of hard rides<\/p>\n While Fairbrother\u2019s Fast Food 500 used monotony to take a trip deep into his mind and test his mental strength, he\u2019s long found ways to challenge himself in more obviously appealing ways.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re not familiar, Fairbrother is a New Zealand rider who made a name for himself doing unreasonably hard, but different and interesting challenges. Like bikepacking \u2013 er, enduro-packing between Enduro World Series rounds in 2022. Then again when it became the Enduro World Cup rounds<\/a>. Or riding Vancouver\u2019s brutal mountain bike Triple Crown ride, back-to-back-back. Yes, that is a\u00a0Triple Triple Crown<\/a>. Or, more recently, riding a 306km, 6,000m descent from Europe\u2019s highest ridable peak to the sea<\/a>.<\/p>\n As he explains in his post on the FF500, part of his motivation for such a seemingly silly ride is preparation for bigger challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cSomewhere within the stupidity is a controlled space to test patience, self-talk, boredom, and resilience. Skills I\u2019ll need when the stakes actually matter and the consequences are real.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re sure the Kiwi enduro packer has plenty of big plans ahead to make good use of his now-proven mental stamina. We can\u2019t wait to see what those plans are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve seen a lot of weird and wacky ways to wrap up the Festive 500 over the years.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,205080,205081,205082,53664,117138,85,84054],"class_list":["post-381111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-fast-foot-500","tag-festive-500","tag-matthew-fairbrother","tag-mcdonalds","tag-mtb-news","tag-sports","tag-strava"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}