Recent Cornell grad completes first-ever ‘Ultra Ergathlon’

Tony Nash is an active-duty military member and a recent Cornell University graduate. In June, Nash became the first person ever to complete an “Ultra Ergathlon.” The Ultra Ergathlon is an endurance event on fitness machines that consists of half marathons on ski, row, and running machines and a full marathon on a bicycle machine. He completed all of those tasks in just under nine hours, not including short breaks in between.

By the end of the day, Nash had traversed 66 miles across the four machines and successfully set a precedent for other endurance athletes. Similar challenges have been done in the past, but not to the lengths of Nash’s feat. He explained what motivated him to attempt the Ultra Ergathlon.

“I never saw myself as an endurance athlete,” he said. “The feat of strength is all about pushing outside of your comfort element. I went as far outside my comfort element as possible. That was a huge driver, because like I said, I never saw myself as an endurance athlete. But then I asked myself, ‘why not?’”

Nash, who is originally from Buffalo, prepared for the Ultra Ergathlon in Ithaca inside his garage gym before completing the feat in Brooklyn. His attempt was part of the Feats of Strength series by activewear brand Ten Thousand that features a different athlete’s attempt at a record-breaking feat each month.

Ten Thousand set up the facility with the four machines, including a self-propelled treadmill that Nash explained was the most difficult task of the day.

“I knew that [the run would be the hardest] going into it,” Nash said. “The Assault Runner is self-powered, so you can’t really rely on a belt to propel you. At that point, I knew I was going to be pretty beat up, so I wanted to have the hardest part at the end, just to really push through and say to myself, ‘hey, you can do this.’”

To help him get through the 13-mile run, Nash had his headphones in, but he wasn’t listening to music. Instead, he had an audiobook pushing him throughout the Ultra Ergathlon.

“I can really get lost in a good story,” Nash said. “I had a specific audiobook picked out for the run called ‘How Bad Do You Want It?’ by Matt Fitzgerald. It profiles different endurance athletes during their times of struggle and how they came through on the other side. It was really interesting to not feel like it was all internal because it’s really easy to when you face adversity.”

He did the same thing while training for the event, listening to other audiobooks or long-form podcasts during his workouts. He was also completing a master’s degree at Cornell while training and graduated a month before completing the Ultra Ergathlon. Nash described how he was able to balance his studies and his training.

“I woke up early every morning at 5 a.m. and got my workout in,” Nash said. “In the afternoon, I’d have a break in between classes, and I would go and do another. I was doing my normal stuff in the morning. Then, in the afternoon, I’d go for an hour and get some time on the machines. Then, the longer events would be on the weekends. I got up to 15k on Saturday the week before, then kind of tapered going into the event.”

Train as much as you want, but very little can prepare someone for 66 miles in the span of a few hours. Nash explained how his mindset helped push him to the finish line.

“I knew I was never going to touch my wall because touching the wall to me means giving 100%, and when you give 100%, you die,” he said. “But I wanted to push that wall farther away. I knew it was going to get moved. The wall is movable. I moved it before; we’ve moved it again recently. Who knows how it’s going to get moved again in the future when it comes to physical fitness.”

Nash is at peak physical shape now, and his experiences have taught him to never place limits on himself. He learned that when originally applying to West Point out of high school when a football coach helped him squash the self-doubt that was creeping into his head.

“Anybody starting on a fitness journey, don’t self-select,” Nash said. “If you don’t think you can, you might not be able to do it right now, but over time, you can absolutely do it.”

Just last week, Nash moved from his home on Asbury Road out to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas along with his wife, who is also an active-duty military member. He added that he can’t wait to return to Ithaca in the future, the place where he built himself to the level necessary to become the first person to ever complete an Ultra Ergathlon.