St. Luke’s University Health Network to be the Official and Exclusive Health System and Hospital Provider of Spartan Poconos

July 8, 2026

BOSTON, MASS. (July 8, 2026) /ENDURANCE SPORTSWIRE/ — Spartan, the world’s leading endurance sports and extreme wellness brand, has announced St. Luke’s University Health Network will be the Official and Exclusive Health System and Hospital Provider of the 2026 Poconos Spartan Race Event to be held July 11 and 12 at Blue Mountain Ski Area in Palmerton, PA.

The weekend’s Spartan events will include a 5K Sprint with 20 obstacles, a Super 10K with 25 obstacles, and kids races from ½ to 2 miles with obstacles. It will also feature a Spartan Trail race on pristine single-track trails too narrow and inaccessible for obstacle building. All races will take place on Blue Mountain.

John Graham, Senior Network Administrator, Fitness & Sports Performance, and a Spartan participant, is excited to mark St. Luke’s fifth year as presenting sponsor of this event in partnership with Spartan. “It’s absolutely incredible to see such determination and human spirit on display,” says Graham, who is a co-captain along with Dave Wood of St. Luke’s Spartan team. “As we celebrate our fifth year, we look forward to everyone stretching their limits and overcoming every obstacle with us. Participants are tested at every turn, making it such an empowering, and life‑changing race.”

“Spartan is built on overcoming obstacles and expanding what’s possible, but nobody accomplishes that alone,” said Brian Cox, Director of Global Partnerships at Spartan. “Having an elite Partner in St. Luke’s provides our racers with the high-level preparation and unmatched recovery support they need – before and after an intense weekend at Blue Mountain. We hope to continue to grow this Partnership for many years to come.”

During the event, St. Luke’s Chiropractic Care and St. Luke’s Sports Medicine team members will be available at the “St. Luke’s Spartans” tent where participants can go for assistance with recovery. The tent will include post-race stretching and recovery tools to help speed the body’s recovery from the intense event. St. Luke’s will also provide snacks and drinks to help participants rehydrate during and after their events. All finishers receive a T-shirt, medal and professional photos.

Experts from St. Luke’s Fitness Centers, Physical Therapy and Running Institute and members of the St. Luke’s medical staff will provide training and racing tips to participants and help coach teams. Spartan Training Classes will be held every Monday and Saturday until July 9 at St. Luke’s Fitness & Sports Performance Center- West End. Classes are 90 minutes.

St. Luke’s Fitness & Sports Performance also offers group fitness classes at its Carbon, Commerce, Anderson, Warren and West End facilities. For more information on the metabolic class schedule, email mystlukes@sluhn.org.

About Spartan

Spartan is a global experiential sport and wellness brand with a 10 million+ strong community. We create transformational experiences, products, and content to help people, companies and teams tear down boundaries and expand what they believe to be possible. Spartan combines large scale global events with a vibrant digital content and community platform. With 250 events across more than 40 countries on six continents, Spartan is the world’s leading extreme wellness and endurance brand. Visit spartan.com for more information and registration.

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network with annual net revenue of more than $4.5 billion. With 23,000+ employees at 16 hospital campuses and 350+ outpatient sites, it is the Lehigh Valley’s biggest employer.

The Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital is based at the Bethlehem Campus.

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school. It also operates the nation’s oldest continuously operated School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 60+ fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 550+ residents and fellows. Additionally, the St. Luke’s College of Health Sciences opened in 2026.

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ranked St. Luke’s #1 – ahead of Houston Methodist and Mayo Clinic, two of the nation’s most prestigious institutions – as the nation’s top health system for quality, safety and patient experience. This objective recognition, based on public data reported to the government, reaffirms St. Luke’s preeminent position as THE BEST OF THE BEST among the most respected health care systems in the United States.

St. Luke’s has been named a Leapfrog Group Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital. In 2026, all of the Network’s eligible hospital campuses were awarded Medicare’s highest ratings for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction. The Network also earned straight A’s for safety from Leapfrog across all of its acute care hospitals. It has earned 100 Top Hospital designations from Premier 12 years in a row, including in 2026 when the Network was identified as THE #1 MEDIUM-SIZE HEALTH SYSTEM IN THE COUNTRY. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.