Edgley, Ross – Loves to be in deep water

Ross Edgley (b1985)

Ross Edgley is an extreme adventurer, ultra-marathon sea swimmer and author.

He holds multiple world records, but is best known for completing the World’s Longest Staged Sea Swim in 2018 when he became the first person in history to swim 1,780 miles (2,860 km) all the way around Great Britain in 157 days.

Voted Performance of the Year by the World Open Water Swimming Association, he documented his training, nutrition, theories and strategies and published them in his books titled The World’s Fittest Book (2018), The Art of Resilience (2020), and Blueprint: Build a Bulletproof Body for Extreme Adventure in 365 Days (2021), all of which became No.1 Sunday Times Bestsellers and have been translated into several other languages.

Edgley was born into a sporting family in Grantham.

His father was a tennis coach, his mother was a sprinter and his grandparents were marathon runners and in the military. Although playing many sports as a child (football, rugby, trail running and tennis), he specialised in swimming and water polo and represented his country internationally at junior level whilst studying at King’s School.

He  gained a sports scholarship to study at Loughborough University’s School of Sport and Exercise Science where he continued to train at the British Swimming National Centre.

A year into his scholarship, Edgley then retired from international competition and decided to transition into ultra-distance sea swimming instead, which the university supported through the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine (an Olympic legacy project delivering education, research and clinical services in sport, exercise and physical activity).

In 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) in Lincoln,[10] for his research into mental and physical resilience and continues to coach and lecture around the world as a leading expert in the science and psychology of adventure.

During his circumnavigation swim of Great Britain, Edgley also broke several other records. Notably this involved becoming the first person to swim the length of the English Channel from Dover to Land’s End, over 350 miles (563 km) in 30 days. Edgley never celebrated the achievement, however, and instead joked it was only a “warm up” because he still had 1,442 miles to swim (and 127 days at sea) before he completed his much larger mission and arrived back in Margate, Kent.

Edgley also accidentally became the fastest person to swim the 900 miles (1,400 km) from Land’s End to John o’ Groats in 62 days. More than halving the time of the previous record (from Sean Conway of 135 days), Edgley and his crew said they did not realise they had broken another record and were just trying to swim fast enough to avoid an Arctic storm approaching from Iceland. He then became the first person to swim the length of the Moray Firth, before heading to the English border at Berwick-upon-Tweed where he joked, “It was all downhill from here”.

On 23 September 2022, Ross completed a charity swim in Loch Ness to campaign for the protection and preservation of sea kelp forests around Scotland in partnership with Talisker and the environmental organisation Parley for the Oceans.

He spent 52 hours and 39 minutes in the water (the longest ever recorded in Loch Ness) swimming through 20-knots of wind and 4-metre waves as the temperature dropped as low as 5° Celsius (41° Fahrenheit). Swimming into day 3, Edgley was forced to abandon the charity event early at Fort Augustus after contracting a severe form cellulitis  and was taken to hospital for treatment. Despite the brutal conditions, he claimed, “It was an epic way to spend 50 hours and the awareness we raised for a great cause made the pain endured and skin lost worth it.”

In preparation for the extreme endurance event and to counteract the cold effect of continual immersion in water, he gained 10 kilos of weight by consuming 10,000 calories a day.[

On 22 January 2016, Edgley began a marathon (26.2 miles (42.2 km)) around the Silverstone circuit in Northamptonshire, pulling a 1,400 kilograms (3,100 lb) car. The event was dubbed “The World’s Strongest Marathon”. As part of his training for the event, he went on a special 6,000 calorie plus daily diet and had already done a 16 miles (26 km) pull with the Mini during training. He completed the marathon endeavor to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust, Children With Cancer, Sports Aid and United Through Sport.[19]

A few months later, on 22 April 2016, Edgley also began his “World’s Longest Rope Climb” conquest at Pippingford Park in the Ashdown Forest of Sussex, in which he completed a rope climb of 8,848 metres (29,029 ft), the exact height of Mount Everest,[20] in 19 hours and 54 minutes. The money raised went to the Teenage Cancer Trust.[21]

Other feats to raise money for charity include a 1,000 mile barefoot run in a month carrying a 50-kg backpack, an Olympic Distance Triathlon carrying a 100-lb tree, swimming over 100 km across the Caribbean Sea pulling a 100-lb tree,[22][23] swimming non-stop for 48 hours at the Commando Training Centre for the Royal Marines, and completing 30 marathons in 30 days.

In May 2018, Edgley published The World’s Fittest Book, which combines the teachings, tips and tricks of Olympic champions, world record holders and celebrated military personnel and knowledge he had acquired from extensive travelling around the world.

In May 2020, Edgley published his second book titled The Art of Resilience which also became a Sunday Times No.1 Bestseller. It focuses on mental strength, stoicism and the physical training needed to create an unbreakable body.

Ross is also co-founder at what is considered the UK’s most innovative sports nutrition company The Protein Works, writes for range of publications (including GQ, Menshealth, Telegraph, Askmen.com, Mensfitness and more) and has amassed a social media following of well over a half a million people.

Now Ross continually looks to challenge the current doctrine of the fitness and nutrition industry in an effort to make things better.

A scientist, sociologist, and philosopher of training and nutrition, his stunts are often designed to (1) Push the boundaries of human physical excellence and (2) Raise money for charities very close to his heart.