Driveway pain, hospice gain Flatmates run a driveway marathon - plus squat thrusts - during lockdown to raise funds.

From the ‘Things To Do During Lockdown’ file comes the tale of three flatmates who decided to take matters to the extreme. Not content with a tortuous eight-hour, non-stop run around their own driveway, they each put in hundreds of back-breaking squat thrusts.

If you are wondering why anyone would even think about going through the pain of such an exercise, the three mates – Jossh Elton, Joe Helu and Graham Grant who are all officers in the New Zealand Army base at Linton in the Manawatu – were doing it for a good cause.

The trio were helped by their other flatmates, Leighton Taniwha (also an officer at Linton) and Alice Finlayson (a student nurse), and came up with the idea of the marathon effort to raise funds for the Arohanui Hospice in Palmerston North while isolating together in lockdown.

At the end of their long day, Elton admitted how hard it was: “We were all a bit broken for a couple of days and the squats were especially tough. But at the same time, we realised what we had done was pretty cool.”

Cool indeed. When they were finally able to put their feet up for a well-earned rest, they learned they had raised more than $9000, a figure which has since climbed to $14,000 after the ASB donated $5000 to give to the hospice in the name of the flatmates as part of the ASB’s Good as Gold Isolation Edition awards.

“Fundraising $9000 is no easy feat, and neither was the exercise that went into raising it, so this award is well-deserved,” he says.

Finlayson says the group got the idea from watching people around the world doing amazing things while in Covid-19 lockdown.

“We saw people who were running marathons around their balconies and we thought ‘why not try it too?’ But we didn’t want just to do a marathon, we wanted to do something ultra,” she says.

The decision to raise funds for the hospice came from Elton, inspired after his mother, who died last year, spent time at the hospice: “She was there a few times over the last couple of years; it is pretty amazing how they look after people and I wanted to give something back.”

So, they hit upon the idea of running laps around their driveway. Dubbing it the ‘driveway 1000’, the group estimated each lap of the circular drive was between 30m and 70m (depending on whether they took the inner or outer running line).

Starting at 10am, the flatmates ran continually until they had completed 1000 laps, in the process covering a distance probably somewhere between 30km and 50km. At the same time, they tried to keep

Left to right: Joe Helu, Jossh Elton, Graham Grant. Photo/Supplied it fun by running in costumes – Helu as Batman, Elton in a school uniform and Grantas a surf lifesaver.

For every dollar donated the lads had to do a squat thrust - or ‘burpee’ as they called it - and changed direction every time a donation of $50 or more rolled in.

While Elton, Helu and Grant sweated it out, Taniwha set up a Facebook livestream to cover the event, provided commentary and updates for those watching, handled online donations and worked hard at keeping the runners motivated.

Utilising her role as a student nurse, Finlayson was assigned to cover for any mishaps: “I was really there to make sure they didn’t die of dehydration,” she says. “I also applied lots of liniment afterwards – and got roped into doing a few ‘burpees’ as well.

“It was a great day and we had lots of neighbours who were out walking stop and watch (while keeping their distance, of course). The boys were pretty low on energy when it was all over; they were all fast asleep by nine.”

Elton says they had no problem with fitness: “We do PT every week at the base and Graham and I play rugby in the Linton senior side, although we are pretty gutted not being able to play at the moment.”

The flatmates were nominated for the ASB award by Ryan Trounce of Auckland, a friend of Finlayson from their days together as lifesavers at the Ruakaka Surf Club eight years ago.

“One of my roles there was to organise sponsorship, so I know how hard fundraising is,” he says. “I always try to support people who are out there doing it rather than those who just sit around asking for hand-outs.”

Trounce says he found out about the ‘driveway 1000’ through a Facebook post the group shared and watched the livestream from his home for “about four or five hours”.

He decided to nominate them for the award after seeing an ad on television: “I was watching the news and saw the ASB ad calling for nominations so I thought ‘OK, cool, I’ll nominate Alice and the guys.”

“It’s been truly inspiring to see some of the amazing things that have come out of lockdown – including this fundraising challenge.” — ASB Bays and Lower North Island regional manager Barry Coffey.