Personal trainer completes Ironman Triathlon in his garden and raises thousands for St Richard’s Hospital

Rob said the swimming pool was 'freezing cold' and it got 'very tough for the last half hour'

A personal trainer from Aldwick has successfully completed the arduous task of doing the Ironman Triathlon in his garden after the real event in France was cancelled due to the coronavirus.

Rob Dunlop, 30, who was attempting to raise £1,000 for St Richard’s Hospital — where his mum, Alison, works as a nurse — managed to reach more than double that total.

He said: “It’s gone over the £2,000 marker now which is absolutely incredible.

For the second part of the challenge, Rob cycled for more than seven hours on his turbo trainer

“I had clients and people from New Zealand jumping in to watch [on the Facebook live stream]. It was brilliant to see so many people on board.”

Rob started the challenge at 6am on Saturday, May 9, by swimming for 90 minutes in a pool, borrowed from one of his clients, before cycling for more than seven hours on his turbo trainer. Rob completed the triathlon by running the 26.2 mile marathon round his garden.

He said: “It was well worth the agony I was in for a few days. It’s been awesome.

“The pool was freezing cold and it got very tough for the last half hour.

Rob said he had clients and people from New Zealand join his Facebook live stream

“The cycle covered 180km and it was going well and I was live-streaming everything but Facebook decided to shut me down when I was 10km from the end.

“That was a little bit annoying because there were so many comments keeping me going.

“[The marathon] went okay to start with but I picked up blisters. It still went as well as it could and I was blown away by how much we raised in the end.”

A message from the Editor, Gary Shipton:

Rob started the challenge at 6am on Saturday, May 9, by swimming for 90 minutes in a pool, borrowed from one of his clients

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