At 47, some people have problems doing 100 crunches in an hour. San Jose’s Steve Sokol did 5,428. At one point, he could also do 1,000 sit-ups in ten minutes, 30,000 jumping jacks in eight hours, and bike from San Francisco to LA in just two days, without once sitting on his bicycle seat.

Steve Sokol was tough, the toughest they come, which is why he was known as the “World’s Fittest Man.” He died in a car crash on Monday morning, after his car rammed into a power pole on Cottle Road.

The remarkable thing about Steve Sokol is that he was a sickly boy, who suffered from asthma. That was what drove him to exercising; he later earned a degree in exercise physiology at San Jose State University. Sokol worked as a nutritionist and trainer, both for major companies and local police and fire departments.

Police say that no drugs or alcohol were found at the scene of the crash, and an autopsy will be performed to determine the precise cause of death. Sokol’s wife says that he was feeling under the weather this weekend, during a race that he ran in Los Gatos. His mother wonders whether he suffered from some undiagnosed condition, noting that he avoided ever going to doctors. “He thought he knew his body better than they ever could,” she said.
Read More at The Mercury News.