{"id":231216,"date":"2026-01-13T17:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T17:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/231216\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T17:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T17:57:09","slug":"mountain-biker-spends-24-hours-circling-christchurch-mcdonalds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/231216\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain biker spends 24 hours circling Christchurch McDonald’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Twenty-one-year-old<\/p>\n

\nTwenty-one-year-old Matthew Fairbrother rode around a Christchurch McDonald’s for 24 hours.
\nPhoto: Matthew Fairbrother\n<\/p>\n

A Christchurch mountain biker spent 24 hours cycling continuous laps around a McDonald’s drive-through to test his endurance.<\/p>\n

Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Fairbrother clocked up 500 kilometres on the ride on Christmas Day, which he described as a “deliberately absurd” endurance challenge.<\/p>\n

“I came up with this idea about a year ago and started looking into it and worked out the only day that I could do it was the 25th of December because that’s the only day McDonald’s shuts down,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s been on my mind the last 12 or so months and it’s just been burning a hole, so I had to go extinguish that fire and get it done.<\/p>\n

“There was never a distance goal it was just a time goal. I basically told myself I’d bike for 24 hours or up until I got kicked out. I started at 5am and then I stopped at 5am and over the whole 24 hours I only spent just under two hours not moving.”<\/p>\n

Fairbrother said he felt exhausted but satisfied at the end.<\/p>\n

He said the ride was intentionally simple and repetitive, and rather than aiming for speed or spectacle, the challenge focused on mental discipline.<\/p>\n

“I don’t usually do stupid things like this. At my core I’m a mountain biker, mainly long distance so a lot of the things and events I do are super physically tough, but also mentally tough, so I spend a lot of time by myself in the mountains and most of the time it’s mind over matter,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So I guess this was a big test of what my mind and my mental capacity actually has. Physically I knew I could bike for 24 hours non-stop but to do it in the way I did, mentally I’ve never done anything so tough.”<\/p>\n

Fairbrother said he got into biking through his family.<\/p>\n

“I started mountain biking when I was 12 but the more adventure side of it kicked in at age 16, then at age 17 I went overseas to compete internationally and ever since then I’ve been doing six months overseas competing each year.”<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Fairbrother rode around a Christchurch McDonald’s for 24 hours. Photo: Matthew Fairbrother A Christchurch mountain biker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-231216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}