5A MEETS IRONMAN ATHLETE SCOTT SANNITO

From competing at Alcatraz to the East Coast. Scott has covered it all.  

Growing up in North Jersey Scott always had a taste for athletics. 

He competed in 2 Ironman Distance which is 2.4-mile swim; 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run 

The first one Scott did was in 1996 in Florida – it was called the Great Floridian. He completed that in 11 hours and 50 minutes. "My goal for each ironman was to break 12 hours so that was close… it was crazy hot down there"

The second Ironman Scott did was in 2012  in New York and New Jersey– the swim was in the Hudson River, the bike was done on the Palisades Parkway and the run was a split between NJ and NY with a crossing of the George Washington Bridge at Mile 18. As he was recreating a glimpse of that moment Scott told us, "The tide was supposed to be very difficult. As they boated us out there that day, you could tell that all the rescue people were fighting the tide hard, but it was going in our direction – that said, the swim was blisteringly fas and my final time on that was in the 11:40’s – the day was in the mid to high 90’s rough…In both Ironmen I did – someone died…"

Scott also endured a couple of other Triathlons, but they were not the Ironman distance. The first being the escape from Alcatraz. This is where they boat you out to the jail and you swim in, then do a bike/run.

The other was one called SOS where it is 8 stages - a bike (30 miles), run (4.5), swim (1.1), run (5.5), swim (.5), run (8), swim (.5), run (.7) where you end up on top of a mountain in New Paltz NY. After we discussed the logistics, Scott told us some of the most difficult challenges within the race, "what made this interesting is there were no transition stations so you needed to either swim with sneakers on or take them off for every swim and put them back on. I drilled holes in my sneakers for drainage and elected to swim with them on – perhaps not the best choice..." 

Scott continues to enjoy the pleasures of working out and racing. To this day he still runs, swims, and bikes with his wife Chrissy and his children Nicholas, Joseph, and Brady. Being the father of three young men, Scott is now a family man and continues to inscribe the "Do It Better" motto within every facet of his life.