"Stotan" is a term coined by Australian track coach Percy Cerruty. Cerruty was an aficionado of classical Greece, and his new word means a cross between a Stoic and a Spartan. Most of the world first heard it when Cerruty used the term in an article for Sports Illustrated describing how his trainee Herb Elliot, who in the late fifties and early sixties held the world record in the mile run, had become the toughest athlete that he'd ever known, a man with a single-track mind on becoming the best miler in the world. Apparently under Cerruty's training regimen, Elliot would run the rest of Australia's Olympic track team into the ground and then go running by himself over sand dunes. Cerruty's Stotan Philosophy as originally written down in 1946 involved "hardness, toughness, and unswerving devotion to an ideal," but also involved "diet, philosophy, cultivation of the intellect, and openness to artistic endeavours." He believed, quite simply, that "you only ever grow as a human being if you're outside your comfort zone." Though Cerruty died in 1975, his physical training ideas are still around; a 2002 article in the United States Sports Academy's "Sport Supplement" called "Resistance Training- The Stotan Way; Training To Be a Champion Like Percy Wells Cerutty" recommends building an artificial sand dune for track training, and a running newsletter called "The Stotan News" is run by a David Cavall.
Because of the original Sports Illustrated article, a swimming coach at Eastern Washington State College adopted the Stotan concept into an extremely difficult training week for his swimmers during Christmas break from classes. Team captain of these swimmers was Chris Crutcher, who would go on to become an author of young adult novels and would use the "Stotan Week" concept in his 1988 novel Stotan! about four high-school senior boys whose coach offers them a similar marathon training week, pushing their physical and emotional abilities beyond their limits. However, the difficulties in their lives outside of athletics also touch on the "Stotan" concept; it isn't just physical training that brings one to be a Stotan. Because of the book, at least one actual school swimming team has a "Stotan Week."
The book seems to be the source that has spread the word's use to other people outside sports. Stotan.org is a site run by "a group of likeminded individuals who have a thirst for knowledge and enjoy INFOSEC." Their "symbology" is a black flag with a skull and crossed cutlasses and the slogan "Corrupting your children, stealing your bandwidth, penetrating your networks." However, their site's front page is full of links to missing pages, which doesn't make me think much of their ability.
Stotan is also the name of a Multikeo, Washington rock band formed in 2002. However, the "Stotan Falls" in British Columbia just below the confluence of the Puntledge and Browns Rivers is not known to be named after any related source; census records show "Stotan" as a variant spelling of "Stoton" (and DGS tells me that "Stotan" is their surname) so the falls are more likely named after some person.
Sources:
Crutcher, Chris. King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography. New York: Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
http://www.thesportjournal.org/sport-supplement/Volume11/sport-supplement-stotan.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/sportsf/stories/s823522.htm
http://www.coolrunning.com.au/general/2001e003.shtml
http://www.10ktruth.com/q_and_a/vocab.htm
http://www.aafla.org/SportsLibrary/NASSH_Proceedings/ NP1995/NP1995zd.pdf
http://splits.faithweb.com/articles.htm
http://www.westga.edu/~kidreach/stotanrvw.html
http://www.teen-books.com/Stotan_0440200806.html
http://www.ckswimming.com/docs/stotan0304.doc
http://www.stotanmusic.com/
http://www.johnharveyphoto.com/WeekendInComox/StotanFalls.html
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martin.hagger1/census/Stoton.htm