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Introducing a fitness extremist
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: August 15, 2016
I’ve a confession to make, I’m a bit of an odd-ball, been that way as far back as I can remember. Now friends and family are quite familiar with my rather peculiar ways over the years, but to strangers, acquaintances and even fellow colleagues, well I’m still looked upon as a kind of nut, or at the very least as an extremist who loves to walk the razor’s edge of life.
You see I have a deep passion for fitness, endurance sports and adventure travel. That passion developed very early in my life, and it slowly evolved and matured over the succeeding years such that it now pretty much defines who I am as a person. To those who know me, they totally get the passion thing by now and accept my eccentricities. To those who don’t, they tend to believe passion is too tepid a word to describe my zeal, they’d say it’s more like fanaticism. So as my columns pop up over the succeeding weeks and months, I’ll let you be the judge.
I began my involvement in the outdoors as a kid with long days and nights in the woods hiking and backpacking. Then as a teenager I discovered both resistance training and the cycling. During my 20’s I morphed into a bicycle racing and training adrenaline junkie who craved speed and competition. I loved pushing the envelope on those two thin tires, and I savored each and every day I got the opportunity to either test myself against others or test me against myself. I craved the suffering you endure when biking at your AT. And in my 30's and early 40's I grew to love that same suffering feeling in running, swimming and triathlon.
Back then all the training and competition helped to make my life very fulfilling. But then in 1999, on a whim, I did a self-supported cycling trek around Iceland on a mountain bike...and BANG a switch was activated in my brain. By the year 2000 the activation of that switch pretty much spelled the end of my racing days. Mountain biking across Iceland taught me there's just as much thrill in adventure as there is in racing. It also got me thinking about how many amazing adventures lay out there just waiting to be discovered. So began my infatuation with adventure travel, and so to my personal quest to push myself mentally and physically in a host of crazy self-perpetuated adventures, something I now call Adventure Athletics.
Some of those crazy exploits include rock climbing at a host famous climbing destinations across the United States, and mountaineering in such far-flung places as the Norwegian Alps and Svalbard. And after backpacking half the National Parks in the US, I took it across the Atlantic Ocean to do a north to south crossing of Iceland, then a couple of truly primitive treks in Greenland and Baffin Island. Other adventures include cycling 6270 miles across Canada with a friend, followed by four more cross-country cycling trips across the US, the last trek being the first ever crossing of the States all off-road on a mountain bike. I’ve even done these whacko one-day speed hikes in such places as the Colorado Rockies, the Presidential Range of New Hampshire and the Black Forest Trail in Pennsylvania. While there’s always a physical and mental challenge to each undertaking, there’s also a mystical, spiritual, and therapeutic component involved, a triumvirate I like to think of collectively as “church in the great outdoors!”
Now with all that being said you might presume I’m some kind of trust-fund kid who never grew up, but that can’t be further from the truth. My blue-collar background helped me to work, study through college and pave the path I find myself on today. I currently coach endurance athletes, teach rock climbing and outdoing skills and I serve as a personal guide for small groups on adventure vacations. So what I’d like to do with this column is to share a bit of my life, a bit of my knowledge, and a lot of my passion with you. Welcome to Pete’s World!
Pete Gladden, owner/operator of Excel Adventure, Sport & Photo, is a freelance writer and photographer who melds his passion for adventure, endurance sports and fitness with journalism. He's also an elite level cycling coach, an NSCA certified personal trainer and a professional backpacing, cycling and rock climbing guide. Pete can be reached at pjgladd@aol.com.