#2568 - Ross Edgley

Ross Edgley described the physical risks of extreme swimming through two near-fatal episodes. During a nonstop 60-hour swim in Loch Ness for ocean conservation, he began hallucinating and lost consciousness around the 60-hour mark. He attributed this to hypothermia and cellulitis, which he thought might be related to fresh water, and said he was unconscious or drifting in and out for about 13 hours before waking in hospital. In Lake Trasimeno, Italy, he developed heat stroke while swimming in 36°C water and rhabdomyolysis, with creatine kinase reaching 19,000. He said a level of 10,000 prompts urgent hospital care because of kidney concerns; his kidneys filtered the breakdown products, and he left hospital after a few days.

Those experiences informed Edgley’s swim around Iceland, which he described as a 1,000-mile undertaking. He said the University of Iceland proposed collecting environmental DNA around the coast to monitor biodiversity, and that a boat and sponsors were secured for the project. The final stretch brought multiple hazards: with 100 miles remaining, Hurricane Erin was approaching, poisonous volcanic gas restricted access near Grindavik, and glacier ice threatened swimmers at night. Edgley said his son’s impending birth gave him unusually powerful motivation, and he returned three days before the birth. He framed the swim as both a tribute to lessons from his late father and a letter to his future son, saying purpose must outweigh pain to keep going.

Edgley’s approach is to build robustness rather than maximize speed. He said his bulk helps generate heat and that strength training develops resilience in tendons and ligaments as well as muscles. A larger strength reserve makes each stroke a smaller share of maximum capacity, and he expects a long swim to end from a tear before he reaches his VO2 or lactate threshold. He also said an MRI showed an unusual proportion of fast oxidative glycolytic muscle fibers, which can produce force while resisting fatigue, but agreed that the role of genetics is only a theory because training may have shaped them. He has had bone shaved during left-shoulder decompression, with the cartilage intact and the right shoulder unaffected.

He also described ocean conditions that can defeat strength and endurance. On one swim, he spent four hours caught in a countercurrent whirlpool and remained there for most of the day until the tide let him escape. Overfalls, formed when wind and tide oppose each other, can make waves detonate around swimmers, while jellyfish tentacles can be driven into noses and ears. During a 510-kilometer Yukon River swim from Whitehorse to Dawson, completed in 60 hours, rapids threw him against rocks and cut his legs. His team warned that wildlife could smell the blood coming through his wetsuit; he said wildlife appeared more often once his leg was bleeding, and that brown bears felt more intimidating than black bears.

Edgley presented difficult experiences as a test of adaptation, not just endurance. When a strategy stops working, he said, faltering expectations and reward can feel like a “dark biochemical cloud”; he sees two options: persist through pain when purpose still holds, or reframe the situation and change technique. He draws on the idea that fate may be uncontrollable but attitude is not, and tries to swim with gratitude and a smile because a constant “man up” approach would be unsustainable over 100 days. His stories of Icelandic folklore, including berserkers, also served as metaphors for facing hardship, though theories such as mushroom use before battle were discussed as lacking solid evidence.

Edgley said he uses major swims as spectacles and a “Trojan horse” for ocean conservation. He also discussed possible marginal gains, including caffeine and Cognizin for focus, hypoxia training and a future test of creatine; he said he had not used creatine on the Yukon swim. Joe Rogan cited a small study of 15 people kept awake overnight in which a high single dose of creatine was associated with improved processing capacity and short-term memory, but emphasized that the study was small and the dose was not advisable to try at home because of possible kidney strain and other risks. Edgley credited stem-cell treatment, hyperbaric therapy and red-light therapy with helping him return after tearing most of his rotator-cuff tendons, but the speakers cautioned that these treatments vary, need more study, and can carry serious risks when providers are unreliable.