Joe Rogan - Ross Edgley on Swimming Around Great Britain

What possessed you to want to swim around the entire UK? How many thousands of miles is that? Yeah, 2,000 miles altogether. 2,000 miles of swimming? Yeah, yeah. It seemed like a good idea at the time and then halfway around I realized how big Great Britain was. You've done some long swims before, but not like nothing even remotely. Like what's the longest swim you did before this? Yeah, I did, this is a bit of a strange story, I tried to swim between St Lucia and Martinique, two Caribbean islands. It's only 40km from point to point and for charity I was trying to swim from point to point with a £100 tree attached to my trunks. So I was pulling the £100 tree, 6ft waves crashing down and I actually didn't make it from point to point. I was like 5km from the end. When I didn't make it I decided to swim back the other way. So I ended up swimming over 100km with a £100 tree, it took me 32 hours but still didn't make it. What went wrong where you didn't make it? Tides, currents, you know. Oh, you just got swept away? Yeah, yeah. Especially attached to a tree, right? Exactly. How big was this tree? £100, I mean it floats but it was more of the drag. So if there's any influence from tides or currents and it's pulling you in one direction, I was basically going to miss Martinique so I was heading to Cuba, somewhere like that and then on the way back down they turned to me again and they said you're going to miss St Lucia, you're going to end up in further south than St Lucia. And I think I realised as physically fit as you are, the ocean just doesn't care. It just doesn't care. And so after that, this was last year, this was November last year, kind of felt I had unfinished business with the ocean. Came back to England, rung up friends of mine at the Royal Marines. I said, guys, look, this is going to sound so, so strange. I said, but I just need to get out my system. I just need to see how far I can swim in 48 hours. So I swam 48 hours. I can't remember what it was in the air. I think it was 160 kilometres, something like that. And I finished and I had basically trench foot. So where your feet and your hands are so kind of, I've got so much water in there, it's almost going mouldy. Yeah. So I had trench foot and I'm sort of sitting there nursing my feet and one of the officers, a good friend of mine, and they came over and they just said, they went, you know, real English Royal Marine, they said, you boy. And I said, yes. And they said, what are you training for? I said, oh, I'm training for potentially attempting the world's longest current neutral swim. And then just paused and he sit his cup of tea and he looked me up and down. He just goes, that just sounds a bit lame. I was like, okay, what, what do you want me to do? And he pauses and he says, you just need to man up. You need to man up and swim around Great Britain. I was like, whoa. I can't, I can't, I couldn't say no once. Why don't you swim with me, bitch? I'm doing it. You do it, motherfucker. That's a crazy thing for somebody to be asking you to do. No, I know. Right. So I said fine. Once the idea stuck with me. I mean, we've got this real history and heritage of British eccentric explorers. And for me growing up, there's a story of Captain Webb. So the first guy to swim across the English Channel and for those who don't know English Channel, you know, the tides, they believed were too strong. The water was too cold. They said you just can't make it across the English Channel. It's impossible. But Captain Webb refused to listen and 1875 August across the English Channel. And this is the part I love on a diet of beef broth and brandy in a woolen wetsuit. He swam. I think it's 23 hours. Breaststroke with his head out the water because and I quote front crawl was ungentlemanly like and there was that element that I just thought that's amazing. Front crawl. What is the front crawl? So basically that's front. The regular one. Yeah. But way back in 1875, it was like, no, that's he thought it was ungentlemanly. Yeah. It was the movements itself themselves. Yeah. It was still being developed as a technique. Whereas, you know, if you were a gentleman and you were a swimmer, you swim breaststroke. You know, wow. Exactly. Head out of the water the whole time. The whole way. 23 hours. And again, like the the the support boat was saying, you know, get out. You're not going to make it. You're not going to make it. And he just refused. And 23 hours. So, you know, that's part of a night swim as well. Head out the water just all the way. Why brandy? Is he getting fucked up or just a little bit of brandy? You know, I don't know. Maybe it might have been a bit of Dutch courage, but I think there was, you know, certainly back then sports nutrition isn't what it is today. Right. So I think there was an element. He was even like lubing himself up in goose fat. You know, this is way back. Make himself slicker. Slicker. And I think there was an element of warmth or that was certainly the belief. Right. So it was the Tour de France guys. Didn't they drink wine? That was like a big thing back in the day. Way back. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't too long ago. I mean, Jamie was just just talking now about football back in England and it wasn't until, you know, two long ago, maybe 100 years ago, they used to just keep brandy in the dressing room in case you needed to warm yourself up. Really? And now. Yeah. Wow. So they would play soccer drunk. Yeah, kind of just like a little bit in the back. He said just warm yourself up. Just a little bit of something. Exactly. You turn it over. Exactly. Wow. Wow. And I think, you know, people don't understand that it's taken, you know, people like Captain Webb, maybe me to a smaller extent. To just raise the bar, push the boundaries and you know, you've seen that. I think our generation have seen that with the UFC, with mixed martial arts that has evolved so fast. I always remember Forrest Griffin used to kind of liken himself to the basketball players just shooting three pointers with the ball between the legs, you know. And that always resonated with me because I was like, yeah, the evolution that we've seen and what sort of Bruce Lee had the foresight to predict is amazing. And I think in a much, much smaller way, again, to go back to sort of British athletes and adventurers, Roger Bannister, you know, first time to run the four minute mile, and people said couldn't be done. And he was a medical student at the time. Leading physician said, you can't do it. Your lungs will explode, your legs will fall off all sorts. But no, he said, you know, Oxford, laced up his trainers and ran a four minute mile. Similar right now to what I think we're seeing with Kip Chogie, you know, and the two hour marathon. And so that's why in again, in a much, much smaller way, when I had that conversation about swimming around Great Britain, everybody said it can't be done. Yes, it's 2000 miles, but there's giant whirlpools in Scotland called the Coriavekin, Penland Firth, renowned around the world. If you get that wrong, you're disappearing backwards at 10 knots. There's no way you're swimming against that. And 10 knots, that's a dolphin speed. Jesus. Yeah. So what is 10 knots in miles per hour? Basically 10 miles per hour. Yeah. Oh my God. 10 miles per hour backwards as you're trying to go forward. Basically, yeah. Penland Firth, the top of Scotland, the currents that go across there. So it's running in a good clip. But yeah, yeah. Backwards. Yeah. I mean, we got it good. We managed to basically predict it so well that I think that was probably my top speed, which I did. 8.7 knots. 8.7 miles per hour. I was basically cruising along the top, which is, which is like a dolphin. So you were having the waves behind you pushing you almost. And see now that's what's interesting because I had the tides and currents with me, not necessarily the waves. Yeah, I said it wrong. And when you get, but actually you made a good point in terms of when you get wind over tide. So if you've got 10 knots going this way, but you've even got a little bit of wind and waves going this way, it can get choppy. Oh, okay. And again, sort of looking at West Scotland, wind over tide, you can get 40 knots coming straight down the barrel, but you're trying to swim with the tide. Whoa. Yeah. So the wind is coming at you, but the tide is going the opposite. And as you can imagine that just. Oh my God. Yeah. So how do you predict this, this, this tide that you have to get right? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's in completely in theory. And this is what I realized when I sat down and we started sort of plotting the great. What is it called again? What is the, the issue that'll push you back? Oh, just the title. Yes. What is it called that area? Oh, you say you got to get right. Oh, so Penn and Firth. Exactly. If you imagine the shape of Great Britain, there's all sorts of kind of compression where the water will just come rushing through. And as well as the Penn and Firth, you can get, you know, six knots around Wales. There's an island called Skoma. And if you get that right, you are disappearing up, you know, and you're winning. You get it wrong. Again, you're going backwards. And for me to do a continuous stage swim, if I'm going backwards, I've got to start where I was going backwards. And so I met Firth before and he said, We're on the schedule? They were like parish. Are we on the lock causing a challenge? We were inBig basically and this is the thing I think with the Great British Swim we were kind of taking swimming as most people understand it and we were we were removing it and putting it in an arena that was so different so and I think that's why it was it did so well kind of online as well the community around it because obviously swimmers were interested but you know surfers started to get involved because they understood the waves sailors fishermen you know all sorts of people started to say you know sometimes in Great Britain it's not safe to take a boat around the top of Scotland you know for instance never mind a swimmer so that's that's why it was amazing that they're on the entire series it became a melting pot an exchange of ideas because nobody knew how to get a human body around the coast of Great Britain it wasn't just about swimming and and that was what was really cool how do they know like when the tides are going one way or the other how do they predict that yeah I mean tides are so predictable so in theory they change every six hours so in theory when we sat down and we looked we know that if you do six hours on six hours off for 157 days you'll make it around the coast of Great Britain you know and and that was the theory so you do this by phasic sleep and you swim for 12 hours a day but that's all theory there's times when as I mentioned giant whirlpools or or the tides might not necessarily if you imagine sort of that's Great Britain there the tides don't necessarily go always like this so they're not that predictable sometimes if there's kind of like this like that's kind of whales there the tides will do this so you're doing all these different things that people are not going to see right they're listening to it on audio so just try to just describe it right so basically rather than the tides just going up and down and working with you sometimes they cross cross yes you're just kind of getting slapped across the face my tides essentially and it's not just helping you you're gonna basically zigzag all the way up the coast of Great Britain so as predictable as tides are we found there was so much stuff that when we're out there we were like oh it wasn't meant to do that or a giant whirlpool wasn't meant to be there you know but it is and and that was what was you know pretty yeah pretty sketchy at some times you know that when we're out there if a whirlpool just decides to appear you've got there's not really enough time to say hang on that wasn't on the map can we look at that can we speak to the Met office and talk about you know weather reports no you just you either had to swim through it or try and get out there as quick as you could so when you encounter something like that and you get stuck do you pull out of the water and try back again later at the same location you do but quite often if it was there it's still gonna be there oh it's just it is what it is yeah so sometimes there's there's an option and perhaps the best example of this I mentioned before it's called the Correa Veken so sort of west coast of Scotland and it's a giant whirlpool and and Matt the captain turned to me and said look Ross you know I need you to swim and I need to swim hard you know you need to swim six hours you just need to be clear of this whirlpool so as we were swimming past it I set my watch I saw him hard for six hours but about three hours in I got stung by jellyfish and I've been stung by jellyfish a lot before you see you know it's painful but it was it was bearable but this one particular jellyfish it just it was searing into my skin it just it wouldn't stop throbbing and so I carried on swimming three hours past and and it was just unbearable so I popped my head up and I looked at Matt the captain from the boat I said Matt I'm so sorry I've been stung I'm gonna I'm gonna have to stop I've been stung by jellyfish but the pain's just not going away and as I said that to him he looked down at me and he said yeah I know because the tentacles still wrapped around your face so I'd basically been swimming for three hours with a jellyfish on your face wearing a jellyfish it wrapped into my goggles so I took my goggles off and peeled this fat tentacle through it away and then like I said I'll show you in a minute I'll never there was a picture where my face sort of changed shape and the goggles wouldn't fit on my face anymore because my eye sockets were so swelled and but I knew that again for all of this happening the Coriavek and the giant whirlpool was still to my left so Matt was like you still need to swim you still need to swim so I ended up putting the goggles over my face and to try and get them to seal I just punched them into my face so you just had these perfect rings and then I managed yours so swollen yeah so you had to push them through the swelling basically yeah oh my god so you swim I made another hour we got clear of the Coriavek and so we managed to clear this giant whirlpool I collapse onto the boat and and this is the thing it was at that point that I collapsed exhausted face now a different shape to when I started that particular swim and and the team looked at me and they saw how bad I was how how beaten up I was but they also knew that that the sea just doesn't care and in six hours the tide was gonna change and I'm not gonna have to do that all over again well and it was that kind of brutal lesson from nature that that from a sports science background I'm interested in you know rehab rest recovery nutrition strategies all of this but with swimming around Great Britain it very quickly became apparent that the sea just doesn't care it just doesn't care that you need to rehab your shoulders it doesn't care that the ligaments and tendons in your shoulders are hurting you might get impingement from swimming too much you know none of this and that's why it went from swimming as I understood it and how a lot of people understand it to something completely like surviving basically in the water so your swimming schedule would be six hours on and then you would try to rest when would you eat during the swims or between and during the swims yeah yeah so quite often just you know throwing bananas at me and and wow salty bananas basically yeah yeah just salty but I need to eat them while you're in the water yeah wow yeah cuz cuz again going back to what we're talking about with the pendulum first you could get out and you could get on the boat but sometimes in a really good tide if you are just in the water you could be making four knots you don't have to swim but if you get in the freezing cold water of Scotland and you are quite happy getting hit in the face by tentacles you can still make four knots and so that's why so often it became about something different than swimming it was just it was just mental fortitude it was physical fortitude it was basically I always remember actually first day of autumn I got up it was two o'clock so it was a night swim two o'clock in the morning and I left my wetsuit out to dry and I had to scrape just a thin layer of ice off the wetsuit before I could put it on but if I didn't if I didn't get in and I didn't scrape that wetsuit then that would have been you know 15 miles potentially that we would have missed out on and if you missed those 15 miles that the window of opportunity to swim around Great Britain because of the British summer being notoriously unpredictable and quite short we wouldn't have made it round because even towards the end there was two storms storm alum and storm Callie, Allie and Callum who kind of stopped us for those two days where we couldn't swim because you just couldn't swim in a storm it wasn't safe so when you were swimming this was all during the summer yeah yeah through the autumn and then we finished November the 4th which was going into the winter as well and you started what month? June the 1st so for since June you've been swimming yeah basically god damn man