By Jake Bridges on SwimSwam
British ultra-marathon swimmer Ross Edgley has completed his “Great Icelandic Swim”, where he became the first person ever to swim 1,000 miles around the island nation of Iceland.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Ross Edgley (@rossedgley)
The 39-year-old Englishman began the swim in Reykjavik on May 17th. He returned to Reykjavik on September 9th, completing his historic 1,000-mile swim in 116 days.
The swim took place in what were likely the most treacherous conditions a long-distance open water swim has ever been attempted in, which were documented on Edgley’s YouTube channel and Instagram page.
Water temperatures were as low as 39 degrees Fahrenheit. Edgley frequently encountered countercurrents, strong headwinds, unpredictable tides, and large swells. He suffered from severe salt tongue, wetsuit chafing wounds, and had to communicate with his crew non-verbally after his swims because his mouth was numbed by the cold.
In those conditions, Edgley swam around 12 miles per day. That number may seem large, but Edgley couldn’t get in the water every day. Extreme weather occasionally blew in from the Arctic, which would force Edgley and his crew to seek refuge in port for multiple days.
Upon completing the swim, Edgley said, “This has been the toughest and most ambitious challenge I have attempted yet.”
Coming from Edgley, that statement carries weight. In 2018, he swam 1,791 miles around the entirety of Great Britain. In 2024, Edgley swam 317 miles down the Yukon River in Canada without stopping. He ran a marathon while pulling a car in 2016, and tried to swim from Martinique to St. Lucia while pulling a 100 lb log the next year. The list goes on.
Edgley chronicled the swim in a video series uploaded to his Youtube channel. When documenting the first week, it was clear the conditions were hitting Edgley hard. “I’m in pieces”, he said.
The rough seas were also difficult for his crew. Many of them struggled with seasickness during the first week, and one crew member was forced to return to land. “We made it across the bay”, Edgley said, “but entirely in good shape”.
The difficult conditions persisted, but Edgley and his crew seemed to adapt quickly. Throughout the rest of the series, Edgley displayed an incredible degree of positivity and energy, a trait that he is known for.
Over the course of the swim, Edgley maintained a pattern of two four to five-hour swims per day, and aimed to cover six miles in each one. When not swimming, Edgley was on his support boat, where he was either sleeping, being tended to by his support staff, or eating.
Edgley’s calorie intake throughout his swim was immense: he held a minimum of 10,000 calories a day. He made frequent refueling stops during his swims, as often as every 20 minutes, where his crew would throw him nutrition shakes attached to a line from the support boat.
Extreme calorie intake was also part of Edgley’s preparation. He was eating over 10,000 calories per day before the swim in an attempt to build a layer of insulatory fat that would help shield him from the cold. In the buildup, he put on somewhere between 22 and 33 pounds.
The swim was continuously tracked by GPS. Edgley’s crew marked his starting and stopping point each day, and returned to their previous stopping point at the beginning of each swim.
Record-setting wasn’t the only goal of Edgley’s mission: daily water samples were taken to be analyzed for microplastics and biological composition by multiple research institutions that partnered with Edgley.
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