Marathon enthusiast Elisha Nochomovitz has refused to let coronavirus lockdown stand in the way of his training.
The Frenchman eschewed the streets in favour of his seven-metre apartment balcony, running an estimated 6000 laps totaling 42.2km in distance.
Nochomovitz said he wanted to provide an example for those who had flouted the self-isolation protocols currently in effect in France in order to exercise.
"I had the possibility of going out to run around the house," he wrote on Instagram. "But if everyone thinks the same, there would have been many outside."
The run took him 6h 48m to complete.
Nochomovitz had been training for a marathon and viewed his balcony challenge as a unique test of his adaptability.
"I needed to assure myself that I could still run 40km whatever the condition," Nochomovitz told the Associated Press.
“I thought about many things, what’s going to happen, when I see that the world has stopped, sports, economy, finance. We learned in history about wars between nations, men and weapons, but this is something that is beyond us.”
Technically, French authorities still allow people to go outside for “individual sports” like running, if they sign a special form explaining why.
"If everyone thinks the same way and does the same thing, we’ll all find ourselves outside and that won’t help anything, and the message that we need to stay confined at home will have had no impact."
