317 Miles: Breaking The Longest Non-Stop Swim Record - Ross Edgley - #824

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Ross Edgley. He's an endurance athlete and an author. Ross just broke the world record for the world's longest non-stop river swim. It took over two days with no sleep, no stopping or touching land. He's also swam around the entire UK and competed head to head with sharks. Time to find out how his mind, body and preparation works. Expect to learn how Ross prepares for an endurance event, how you go to the bathroom when you're locked inside of a wetsuit, what 50 hours of sleep deprivation whilst exercising feels like, Ross' diet and daily routine, the scientific mindset of resilience, strategies to push yourself to your absolute limit and much more. Ross is a beast. The guy is a complete freak. And the fact that he does it all with a smile on his face makes me so unbelievably suspicious and in awe of what he's been able to achieve. He genuinely is a one in a seven billion type of human. And there is so much to take away from today. Also, people of Australia and the UK, my live show is coming to you this November. Brisbane, Wednesday, the 6th of November, Melbourne, Friday, the 8th of November, and Sydney, Saturday, the 9th of November. Tickets are available right now and selling very quickly at chriswilliamson.live.australia and London, the event in Apollo on Thursday, the 28th of November. Tickets are already more than 50% sold out, so you need to get yours quickly at chriswilliamson.live.australia. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ross Edgley.
Take me through what you've just done. What have you just completed?

**Ross Edgley** (2:03)
Yeah, yeah. So I suppose after swimming around Great Britain, so the 157 days, 1,780 miles, that was the world's longest stage sea swim. So stage just means basically that you swim to a certain waypoint, you get out on the boat, and then you start from that waypoint, you keep going until you go all the way around Great Britain. I sort of had this idea and sort of fascination with a non-stop continuous swim, which is just basically no sleeping, no touching land, no one can touch you. I don't know why. It just ignited a bit of a curiosity in me. Tried a few times in different bodies of water, Loch Ness, which didn't go entirely to plant.

**Chris Williamson** (2:38)
Go through what happened with Loch Ness and the Italian one.

**Ross Edgley** (2:42)
That's right. So Loch Ness was the first one, and that was 2022 It was all to raise awareness around ocean conservation, doing some brilliant work with Talisker and Parley, protecting marine ecosystems around the world. We had everything set up. I mean, Loch Ness is a body of water that you don't take lightly. It's as long as the English Channel. The way that the wind picks up is always a massive funnel. So you'll just end up getting 10-foot waves. We were already pushing it into the winter, and then the Queen actually died the day that we were meant to start. So obviously, out of sheer respect, the entire country shut down. Then I sat there knowing full well, and as a team, we're like, okay, this is now getting into the winter, which it goes from being ambitious to a little bit stupid. But with all of that said, the goal was always to raise awareness around ocean conservation. So I was like, do you know what? Not ideal conditions, but let's go. So I sort of set off knowing, not to say it was doomed to fail, but the odds were stacked against us. Things are going pretty well, 53 hours in, and then it just kind of went dark. And then I remember just waking up, a hospital bed, seeing my mom and my girlfriend, and I was like, oh, it's not gone well, has it? And they were like, no, it's not. Hypothermia, cellulitis was actually what stopped it, which is where the wetsuit was chafing. It's a bacteria infection. But basically when that gets in your lymph nodes or bloodstream, it can be fatal. So so glad that the team sort of called it and the doctor did when they did. Fast forward another year, and I thought, do you know what? Let's get away from the cold. Let's go somewhere warm. Went to Italy, Tres Amino. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Again, paid for the boat, paid for crew. Everybody's out there. And then an anti-cyclone from the Sahara Desert ends up in Tres Amino, which is kind of this huge dome as well. So it just became a massive sauna. But because of the authorities in Italy, they basically say, if you're going to swim in that lake, you pay for permits, organized permits. It has to happen at that time. We flew camera crews out and crew. It had to happen. So we set off, I think in the shallows, the water was like 36, 37