A 200-plus-mile run in the desert? No problem. Biking to the top of a virtual Mt. Everest? Check. Army-crawling through a mud pit underneath a maze of barbed wire? Bring it on. It's all in a day's work for some of the Lehigh Valley's most extreme athletes. They're pushing their bodies to the limit, and then going back for more.
Beth & Scott Pretti
He rides. She runs. And together husband and wife Scott and Beth Pretti of Bethlehem have racked up thousands of miles between them.
Beth, 49, took an interest in running 20 years ago, after giving birth to the couple's son. “It was an easy way to get a workout in,” she says. Six years later, she was gearing up for her first marathon at Disney World. “I thought I'd only do one marathon—a one-and-done thing. But I really enjoyed it,” she explains. Not only did she do more marathons, she upped her game to take on her first of many ultra marathons in 2012. In May of this year, she was the top female finisher in a 24-hour race called Three Days at the Fair in Augusta, New Jersey. She completed 109 miles, beating her goal by two miles. But she almost came up short.
“From miles 30 through 60 I felt horrible. I wanted to vomit,” she says. She told herself she'd make it to mile 62 and then call it quits. But when she returned to the car, exhausted and defeated, Scott was asleep. Not wanting to disturb his slumber, she decided to tough it out just a little bit longer. Back to the race course she went. Eventually the pain lifted, and she made it all the way to mile 109.
In 2014, Beth became a certified Marathon Maniac. She's a member and regional ambassador of the worldwide club that brings like-minded runners together from every corner of the globe. Membership is contingent on meeting certain stringent standards—gold status, for example, is achieved by running either four marathons within 37 days or at least 12 marathons over the course of a year. For the record, Beth is at the bronze level, with plans to climb up the ladder soon.
Scott's cycling career began when he was a teenager. At the time, it was a choice dictated by persistent knee problems; running up and down a basketball court or a football field wasn't an option. He raced competitively while attending Penn State, but admits that it wasn't really his scene. “I got so nervous that I would not do well,” he says.
He started focusing on distance instead of speed, and dreamed of riding his bike across the country. In 2013, that dream became a reality. Scott pedaled his way from San Diego to Georgia—2,800 miles in 17 days. “It's a great way to see the country,” he says.
The day Scott recalls as his “single toughest day on a bicycle” came three years later, when he took the “Everesting” challenge. The premise is that bikers pick one ascent to repeat over and over, until their total elevation gain equals that of Mt. Everest—or about 29,029 feet. Scott did it in 14 hours and 15 minutes. “I had to keep going through two thunderstorms,” he recalls.
All in all, over the course of four years, Scott powered through 55,000 miles on two wheels—a tally greater than what most people amass on four, by way of automobile.
While both Beth and Scott invest many hours in maintaining optimal physical fitness, the Prettis are usually apart during their athletic pursuits, although it's not for a lack of giving togetherness a try. Scott recalls a tandem bike ride he shared with Beth before they were married, and Beth remembers Scott trying to trudge through a half marathon. But ultimately, they realized Beth is more at home pounding the pavement, and Scott will always belong on the back of a bicycle. “I think it's good that we have these separate things that we're passionate about,” says Scott. And while one is toiling away, the other is free to act as coach, crew and chief cheerleader.
Craig Sheckler
For most average athletes, completing a 24-hour trail run is an unattainable goal—a “someday” that hovers on the horizon and grows hazier with each passing year. But if you're Craig Sheckler, not only do you willingly sweat it out over 100 miles of hilly terrain in the heat, you do it while wearing a weighted pack. Sheckler says his self-designed, solo endurance run in July at Hickory Run State Park in Carbon County was a stepping stone, a warm-up for the main act: the Moab 200 Endurance Run in Utah in October (by the way—it's actually 238 miles). Of course, it's all in a day's work for a man who truly walks the walk while he trains endurance athletes for a living.
Sheckler, of Coopersburg, played volleyball while he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, but he was itching to try something new. “The idea of an individual sport instead of a team sport was attractive to me,” he says. He and a couple of buddies decided to train for a triathlon; one injured himself, and the other moved away, which left Sheckler as the last man standing. Fast-forward 25 years later, and Sheckler has an array of extreme endurance challenges under his belt, including 35 Ironman Triathlons (that's a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run—each time), and more than 100 shorter triathlons, duathlons, marathons and other races. He was also a top U.S. finisher in the three-day Ultraman Wales in 2011.
Sheckler, 48, says getting to the finish line requires the right balance of brain and brawn. “The more time I spent in the sport, especially the longer the distance, the more I realized how mental it is,” he says. “It's not just a physical thing.” That's not to say he hasn't pushed his body to the breaking point. He recalls hitting a low point during the overnight hours of a 100-mile trail race. “Every part of your body is hurting,” he says. “It would be so easy to drop out.
The other option is to turn your head lamp on and head into the woods by yourself.” You can probably guess which option he picked. “It all comes down to how deep you can dig,” he says.
While he was working on perfecting his physical prowess, Sheckler also enjoyed training friends as a hobby on the side. But, in 2007, he took a chance and quit his full-time corporate job to create his own coaching company, Endurance Multisport. Despite the name, Sheckler says his company caters to all athletes, not just the ones who rack up mileage in the double digits. “We've coached people through their first 5K, all the way up to the world championships,” he says. Another component of Endurance Multisport is a 200-member-and-growing club that welcomes triathletes, duathletes and everyone in between. Sheckler says he travels to many of their races, and gets a thrill out of witnessing them reach their goals.
“There's so much joy that crossing a finish line can bring.” And Sheckler believes the lessons learned while getting to that finish line transcend the sports world. “You have all of these highs and lows, problems you have to solve,” he says. ”It's almost like a microcosm of life distilled in one day.”
Jeff Newhard
Jeff Newhard got a good piece of advice on a cold December day in 2011 as he was about to embark on the first World's Toughest Mudder of his obstacle racing career: Wear a wetsuit. A fellow competitor imparted that sage wisdom as they and hundreds of other brave souls were about to dive head first (literally, in some cases) into a mettle-testing obstacle course laid out over several punishing miles of mountain, muck and bone-chilling water.
Fast-forward 24 hours later, and Newhard was slogging across the finish line for the final time in Englishtown, New Jersey. By then, most of his challengers (particularly the less-appropriately-clad ones) had dropped out. His toes were frostbitten. His wetsuit was frozen. And he couldn't wait to do it all over again.
Newhard, 51, has enjoyed breaking a sweat since he was a kid growing up in Allentown. “We grew up without video games, so we played sports,” he says. “You played until the streetlights came on, then you went home and did it again the next day.” He played basketball competitively until trouble with his knees forced him to find a new way to satisfy his inner athlete. After completing his first Tough Mudder in 2010, his search was over. “I did it and instantly went online and started looking for races.”
Now, Newhard has a slew of impressive stats on his resume: He's ranked third in the world in his age group in the Spartan Elite Point series; he's one of just over a dozen people to have completed all six World's Toughest Mudder events (year seven is in Las Vegas in November—yes, he'll be there). All in all, he's toiled and trudged through 75 obstacle races.
That's not to say Newhard hasn't considered throwing in the towel when the going gets tough. In fact, he says it happens almost every single race. “You'll go through several stages of that,” he says. “You've trained, but your body starts to break down.” But there's nothing, Newhard says, that can compare to the euphoria that comes from seeing it through to the end, come hell or extremely high (and cold) water. “Once you finish, you feel on top of the world.”
Not everyone understands that way of life, of course. “My friends [who aren't involved in obstacle racing] think I have rocks in my head,” he laughs. Lucky for Newhard, there are plenty of people who can't seem to get enough of the adrenaline that comes from climbing two-story-high cargo nets when your arms feel like wet spaghetti, or dodging live wires that threaten to singe and burn anything they touch. They're a hardy crew bound together by social media and a shared competition calendar. “I can go to a race anywhere in the country and know someone who's there,” says Newhard.
Beyond reaping the benefits of the camaraderie and the competitiveness, Newhard says he puts his body through the wringer to stay in the best shape possible, and to defy Father Time. “I want to be healthy enough to be physically capable to do whatever I want,” he says. “It feels really good when people look at me and say, ‘Wow, how old are you?'”
