It took 64-year-old Perry Newburn over 18 days to run from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island in New Zealand, breaking a record that had been in place for more than 40 years. Credit: Facebook
He did it! 18 days after Perry Newburn began his journey at Cape Reinga, the 64-year-old Kiwi runner arrived at Stirling Pt, Bluff, earlier this afternoon, breaking a long standing record for the fastest run of the length of New Zealand.
It was no easy feat: Newburn battled extreme weather,from heat to torrential rain and flooding, and only beat the record with a few short minutes to spare.
Fuelled mostly by chocolate milkshakes, Newburn ran the length of New Zealand in 18 days, 8 hours and 42 minutes.
The record for the run along the length of New Zealand was 18 days and 9 hours, set by Siggy Bauer in 1975.
No one had ever managed to beat that until today, when ultrarunning legend Perry Newburn, 64, of Feilding, took a quarter of an hour off that time and set a new record.
Newburn, who lives in Napier, began his record-breaking journey at 4.30am on November 3, at Cape Reinga. It took him just over 18 days to cover 2113km on his own two feet.
He had to run almost 120km a day for 18 consecutive days. That meant running about three marathons a day every day for nearly three weeks, without a single day to rest in between.
Newburn's run had a bigger goal: he is raising funds for the Running on the Spectrum charity, which helps Kiwi children with autism.
The ultramarathon man is not new to big audacious challenges. After the Christchurch earthquake, he ran from Auckland to Christchurch to raise funds. He also holds an impressive world masters record for his run across the United States, in 51 days, 16 hours and 40 minutes.
Newburn attempted to run the length of New Zealand last year but "the weather pretty much derailed the run". He also had an injury that started playing up so, all in all, decided it was smarter to delay it.
Newburn doesn't like saying never but feels like this could be his last run of this type. His Facebook page for the challenge is called "The last Hurrah - Length of NZ 2018" and he feels this may very well be his last hurrah.
The day before starting his record-breaking journey, Newburn told the Herald that, if he was going to do something crazy like running the length of a country one final time, it had to be New Zealand.
