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ITV News
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ITV News
Ultra-swimmer inspired by Thor actor Chris Hemsworth to take on Iceland swim
An ultra-swimmer has said he was inspired by actor Chris Hemsworth 's role as Nordic God Thor to take on a mammoth swim around Iceland. Ross Edgley joked the challenge will be 'the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard' – the home of Thor – as he plans to swim 1,000 miles around the whole of Iceland in a challenge expected to take three months. The 39-year-old, from Cheshire, said the idea for his challenge was inspired by Marvel's Thor star Hemsworth, who introduced him to Nordic folklore after they met during the production of Thor: Love And Thunder. 'I was always just full of questions, just saying, 'why are you doing that? Why does Thor do this?' and we just got chatting,' the ultra-swimmer said. 'His (Hemsworth) knowledge of Nordic folklore is amazing. He's like an encyclopaedia of it. We got chatting about that and then he sort of explained (the folklore) to me.' 'I just thought Iceland, which inspired Tolkien and various other Nordic folklore, is the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard.' The athlete will begin his journey, named the Great Icelandic Swim, on Friday, where he is expected to face choppy waves, killer whales and temperatures as low as 3C. His swimming pattern will consist of swimming for six hours and resting for six hours, which will be repeated every day for around three months. Mr Edgley is no stranger to difficult challenges after he swam more than 1,791 miles in 157 days around the coast of Great Britain and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest distance assisted adventure swim after covering 317 miles along the Yukon River in Canada. He said the Iceland challenge is likely to be 'twice as hard' despite it being almost 'half the distance of the Great Britain swim' because of the colder temperatures. 'Usually in England, when you get out of a frozen lake, you're running somewhere where there's a hot chocolate and you can get around the fire, but out there it's just Viking countries,' he said. 'The wind chill is a different sort of cold and that was a wake-up call for me.' The 39-year-old said he is aiming to get 'as fat as possible and as fit as possible' in order to combat the cold temperatures. 'Body fat is insulating, so the more of it you have the more insulated you are… you just kind of want to be almost seal-like,' he explained. The swim is also being completed in the name of science as he has teamed up with the University of Iceland and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland to take daily water samples. The samples are designed to help build a picture about the biodiversity around Iceland's coast and help towards researching the environmental DNA (eDNA) in the water. 'It allows us to take an incredible picture of the biodiversity all around Iceland,' Mr Edgley said. 'It would allow us to take eDNA samples all around the coast, so we would be able to map the biodiversity of Iceland in a level of detail that's never been seen before.' He hopes the public will follow and support his Great Icelandic Swim as he shares updates via social media. While he acknowledged his followers may tune in to 'see my tongue fall off because of the salt water', he also hopes the challenge will educate people about Iceland's biodiversity. 'Come along, see my tongue fall off, see killer whales and seals… but ultimately, it'll be brilliant to communicate the science as well,' he said.
Rhyl Journal
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Rhyl Journal
Ultra-swimmer inspired by Thor actor Chris Hemsworth to take on Iceland swim
Ross Edgley, 39, from Cheshire, joked the challenge will be 'the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard' – the home of Thor – as he plans to swim 1,000 miles around the whole of Iceland in a challenge expected to take three months. Mr Edgley said the idea for his challenge was inspired by Marvel's Thor star Hemsworth, who introduced him to Nordic folklore after they met during the production of Thor: Love And Thunder. 'I was always just full of questions, just saying, 'why are you doing that? Why does Thor do this?' and we just got chatting,' the ultra-swimmer told the PA news agency. 'His (Hemsworth) knowledge of Nordic folklore is amazing. He's like an encyclopaedia of it. We got chatting about that and then he sort of explained (the folklore) to me.' 'I just thought Iceland, which inspired Tolkien and various other Nordic folklore, is the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard.' The athlete will begin his journey, named the Great Icelandic Swim, on Friday, where he is expected to face choppy waves, killer whales and temperatures as low as 3C. His swimming pattern will consist of swimming for six hours and resting for six hours, which will be repeated every day for around three months. Mr Edgley is no stranger to difficult challenges after he swam more than 1,791 miles in 157 days around the coast of Great Britain and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest distance assisted adventure swim after covering 317 miles along the Yukon River in Canada. He said the Iceland challenge is likely to be 'twice as hard' despite it being almost 'half the distance of the Great Britain swim' because of the colder temperatures. 'Usually in England, when you get out of a frozen lake, you're running somewhere where there's a hot chocolate and you can get around the fire, but out there it's just Viking countries,' he said. 'The wind chill is a different sort of cold and that was a wake-up call for me.' The 39-year-old said he is aiming to get 'as fat as possible and as fit as possible' in order to combat the cold temperatures. 'Body fat is insulating, so the more of it you have the more insulated you are… you just kind of want to be almost seal-like,' he explained. The swim is also being completed in the name of science as he has teamed up with the University of Iceland and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland to take daily water samples. The samples are designed to help build a picture about the biodiversity around Iceland's coast and help towards researching the environmental DNA (eDNA) in the water. 'It allows us to take an incredible picture of the biodiversity all around Iceland,' Mr Edgley said. 'It would allow us to take eDNA samples all around the coast, so we would be able to map the biodiversity of Iceland in a level of detail that's never been seen before.' He hopes the public will follow and support his Great Icelandic Swim as he shares updates via social media. While he acknowledged his followers may tune in to 'see my tongue fall off because of the salt water', he also hopes the challenge will educate people about Iceland's biodiversity. 'Come along, see my tongue fall off, see killer whales and seals… but ultimately, it'll be brilliant to communicate the science as well,' he said.
South Wales Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South Wales Guardian
Ultra-swimmer inspired by Thor actor Chris Hemsworth to take on Iceland swim
Ross Edgley, 39, from Cheshire, joked the challenge will be 'the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard' – the home of Thor – as he plans to swim 1,000 miles around the whole of Iceland in a challenge expected to take three months. Mr Edgley said the idea for his challenge was inspired by Marvel's Thor star Hemsworth, who introduced him to Nordic folklore after they met during the production of Thor: Love And Thunder. 'I was always just full of questions, just saying, 'why are you doing that? Why does Thor do this?' and we just got chatting,' the ultra-swimmer told the PA news agency. 'His (Hemsworth) knowledge of Nordic folklore is amazing. He's like an encyclopaedia of it. We got chatting about that and then he sort of explained (the folklore) to me.' 'I just thought Iceland, which inspired Tolkien and various other Nordic folklore, is the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard.' The athlete will begin his journey, named the Great Icelandic Swim, on Friday, where he is expected to face choppy waves, killer whales and temperatures as low as 3C. His swimming pattern will consist of swimming for six hours and resting for six hours, which will be repeated every day for around three months. Mr Edgley is no stranger to difficult challenges after he swam more than 1,791 miles in 157 days around the coast of Great Britain and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest distance assisted adventure swim after covering 317 miles along the Yukon River in Canada. He said the Iceland challenge is likely to be 'twice as hard' despite it being almost 'half the distance of the Great Britain swim' because of the colder temperatures. 'Usually in England, when you get out of a frozen lake, you're running somewhere where there's a hot chocolate and you can get around the fire, but out there it's just Viking countries,' he said. 'The wind chill is a different sort of cold and that was a wake-up call for me.' The 39-year-old said he is aiming to get 'as fat as possible and as fit as possible' in order to combat the cold temperatures. 'Body fat is insulating, so the more of it you have the more insulated you are… you just kind of want to be almost seal-like,' he explained. The swim is also being completed in the name of science as he has teamed up with the University of Iceland and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland to take daily water samples. The samples are designed to help build a picture about the biodiversity around Iceland's coast and help towards researching the environmental DNA (eDNA) in the water. 'It allows us to take an incredible picture of the biodiversity all around Iceland,' Mr Edgley said. 'It would allow us to take eDNA samples all around the coast, so we would be able to map the biodiversity of Iceland in a level of detail that's never been seen before.' He hopes the public will follow and support his Great Icelandic Swim as he shares updates via social media. While he acknowledged his followers may tune in to 'see my tongue fall off because of the salt water', he also hopes the challenge will educate people about Iceland's biodiversity. 'Come along, see my tongue fall off, see killer whales and seals… but ultimately, it'll be brilliant to communicate the science as well,' he said.
Straits Times
04-05-2025
- Straits Times
Iceland plans for a more volcanic future as southwest enters new eruptive phase
Faced with the likelihood of future displacement and disruption from volcanic activity, Iceland has been creating new tools to protect residents and infrastructure. PHOTO: AFP REYKJAVIK – When Kjartan Fridrik Adolfsson and his family fled their home in Grindavik, Iceland, in November 2023, they didn't know their evacuation would become permanent. For weeks the small fishing town of 3,800 people had been rocked by intensifying earthquakes, and authorities feared a devastating volcanic eruption could be imminent. 'We left with nothing but the clothes on our backs,' the 60-year-old accountant says. Weeks later, fountains of molten rock burst out at the town's doorstep – part of a series of 11 eruptions that have hit the area since March 2021, with the most recent activity on April 1. The seismic shifts have torn fissures in the landscape, cracked roadways and damaged buildings, while lava flows have destroyed a handful of houses. Today, few residents remain in Grindavik, which is just 40km from Iceland's capital and largest city, Reykjavik. Events like this aren't new in Iceland, a famously geologically active island nation that's home to more than 30 volcanic areas and hundreds of hot springs and geysers. Mr Adolfsson himself moved to Grindavik as a child after his family fled a 1973 eruption on Iceland's Westman Islands. But the country's southwest corner is entering a new eruptive phase that experts say will last for centuries. Faced with the likelihood of future displacement and disruption from volcanic activity, Iceland has been creating new tools to protect residents and infrastructure. These include building barriers to protect against lava, studies to better predict where it might flow next, and new methods to cool and constrain the molten rock. Thinking ahead, planners are reconsidering development patterns in the Reykjavik region, so the nation's capital can take new volcanic activity into account when it thinks about growth. Build the walls Geologically, Iceland is turning a corner. 'The eruptive phase we have just entered will last about 300 to 400 years,' says Mr Thor Thordarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland. 'We will be living with this threat long term.' Iceland sits on a seismic hot spot, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are slowly drifting apart. On average, an eruption has struck every three years since the beginning of the 20th century. Much of this activity has taken place in Iceland's remote interior, which is largely uninhabited. But the most recent seismic activity has been clustered on the Reykjanes Peninsula, which extends westwards from Greater Reykjavik and contains both the country's main airport and its most popular tourist attraction, the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa. Six volcanic systems ripple beneath the peninsula, and after an 800-year period of dormancy, the area appears to have reawakened. 'We could have a pause for some months, years or even decades,' says Mr Thordarson. 'But volcanic activity will resume on the Reykjanes Peninsula very likely this century – the question is where.' Vast reservoirs of magma lie beneath the stark basalt landscape, and it's not possible to predict exactly where the molten rock may emerge – here, lava erupts not from mountain peaks but from fissures that open in the ground. As activity eases in one system, it often flares up in another, sometimes years or decades apart. The area is also part of the most densely populated region in Iceland: 80% of the country's 400,000 residents live within an hour's drive of Reykjavik. To minimise disruption in areas where volcanoes and people live side-by-side, Iceland has honed its expertise on building lava barriers. As soon as the most recent round of eruptions began, trucks and bulldozers moved in to construct long embankments made from rock and rubble. These breakwater-like structures are intended to halt the lava's path around Grindavik, the Blue Lagoon and the Svartsengi geothermal power plant, which supplies the Reykjanes Peninsula's hot water. Stretching 13.5km and containing over 3 million cubic meters of rock, the network of protective berms were largely successful during the recent rounds of activity. But in Grindavik, several houses were destroyed after a volcanic fissure opened up on the other side of the barrier wall. 'This is by far the biggest such project worldwide,' says engineering geologist Jon Haukur Steingrimsson, who is supervising the ongoing barrier construction project. It's a job that requires Mr Steingrimsson's team to work within metres of active lava flows whose surface temperature can reach 600 degrees and almost twice that at its core. 'Lava is really just a material like any other,' he says. 'You just have to learn how to work with it and you can't be afraid of it.' Living with lava You can see this pragmatic attitude in the Icelandic approach to managing volcanism. When slow-moving lava 'tongues' crawl across the landscape, threatening development, emergency workers can cool the edge of the advancing flow with pumped seawater, a technique developed in the Westman Islands to prevent molten rock from closing off the harbour. Barriers can be built atop hardened flows to help shield roads and infrastructure. Mr Steingrimsson's team has also been able to rebuild roads that cross these tongues before the rock within has fully cooled. It's a technique that could inspire authorities in other volcanically active places – already Japan's civil protection organisation has sent two groups to study what is being done in Iceland. This knowledge may prove crucial in protecting towns like Hafnarfjordur, on Greater Reykjavik's southern edge. Here a neighbourhood and an aluminum smelter were built on a former lava field – an area by no means guaranteed to be hit by lava where preparations for that scenario are nonetheless worth carrying out. Barriers are being planned to minimise the damage from potential future eruptions. The process involves some potentially difficult choices. 'We won't be able to save everything, but we can save a lot if the circumstances arise,' Mr Steingrimsson says. If areas vulnerable to volcanic activity continue to be built upon, the government might be obliged to 'define which areas there are of secondary importance and not spend money and effort on protecting them.' Planning ahead Part of these protection efforts involve simply working out where lava might flow. The Icelandic Meteorological Office is currently developing a risk and hazard assessment for the Reykjanes Peninsula, prioritising the capital area. The work, which includes running lava simulations, will end in 2026, but the national weather service has already published its first overview. The good news is that risk to life in the city itself is limited: As there are no active eruptive rifts within the area, residents should have time to evacuate before lava from elsewhere reached them. But the report warns that 'damage to buildings and infrastructure could be enormous, even total destruction'. Seismic activity could knock out power and water utilities, block roads and trigger a cascade of related impacts. Should the city's geothermal district heating system go offline in the depths of winter, for example, pipes could freeze and burst, causing extensive damage to buildings. For city authorities, the report will highlight the importance of planning around the danger zones. 'When the risk assessment is done we can start categorizing land in the capital area. It is important that residential areas are built in the most secure zones,' says Mr Haraldur Sigurdsson, Reykjavik's head of planning. 'Then you can trickle down the scale of importance.' Commercial and industrial activity such as warehouses, for example, could be located in the more vulnerable building zones. Housing pressures These risks will likely complicate Greater Reykjavik's future growth. The master plan for the area's seven municipalities is due for an update in 2026, and there is pressure to reduce housing costs by increasing the amount of land allowed for residential building. Reykjavik, the largest municipality, has for years been pursuing a policy of densification over expansion, limiting the city's sprawl as its population grows. But critics have complained that the policy has slowed construction and driven up prices by preventing builders from accessing cheaper land on the outskirts of the city. Mr Sigurdsson says that focusing development on safe zones within the existing city will continue, while 'the reawakening of the Reykjanes peninsula will likely call for the capital area to be developed more towards the north, further away from volcanic activity'. Finding places to build can be a challenge, however. Reykjavik has long debated building housing on the current site of its domestic airport, a 140ha former British Royal Air Force base located just over a mile away from downtown, in one of the country's most expensive areas. But finding an alternative location for the airport – which offers access to the capital to residents of smaller towns in Iceland as well as Greenland – is no mean feat. A site between the city and the country's main international airport at Keflavik, an hour away, was considered, but it's now in the possible path of lava. So is Keflavik itself, for that matter. A wider rethink of where Iceland builds might thus be necessary, suggests Mr Thordarson. 'We need to have risk diversification,' he says. 'In my opinion it is uneconomical to have everyone accumulate in the same spot here in the greater Reykjavik area.' Meanwhile, residents who have relocated from their former homes in volcanically active regions face an unsettled future. The natural catastrophe insurance of Iceland covers damage caused by eruptions or earthquakes, but not losses in market value when an area is deemed unsafe to live in. This is complicated for places like Grindavik, where most homes remain undamaged but cannot be reoccupied safely. The town is small enough that the government has given homeowners 95 per cent of their home's insurance value to relocate elsewhere. With a rough cost of about 73 billion kronur (S$735 million), that policy would be harder to honor if larger towns are placed at risk. In the meantime, those living in the lava zones are learning to come to terms with their displacement. 'Our hope is that these eruptions will stop so Grindavik can be a viable place to live again,' says Ms Arna Bjorg Runarsdottir, a former resident who moved to the peninsula's northern coast. 'We miss our old life. Whether or not we'll return, however, remains to be seen.' 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The Independent
28-04-2025
- The Independent
Ross Edgley aims to be ‘as fat as possible but as fit as possible' for huge Icelandic swimming challenge
Athlete-adventurer Ross Edgley prefaces a lot of his anecdotes with: 'And this is really interesting'. Usually people follow this phrase with something unbearably banal. But as the first and only person to swim around Great Britain, Edgley's brilliantly barmy anecdotes live up to their billing. On the day of our conversation, he's fresh from spending six hours face down in a Scottish loch in preparation for his next challenge: circumnavigating Iceland as a swimmer. After we wrap up our interview, the Myprotein athlete will head back out for another six-hour stint. But this next expedition is more than just a physical test, he tells me. 'The Great British swim was very much done for records, like Captain Webb being the first to swim the English Channel in 1875,' Edgley says. 'For this challenge we're working with the University of Iceland and various scientists to collect environmental DNA samples, so that's more of the focus. Although it is still a world record. I'm just the first person stupid enough to swim around Iceland,' he jokes, before segueing back to the science. 'It was amazing speaking to scientists because they said if someone is stupid and stubborn enough to swim around Iceland and collect samples, that would be incredible for creating this entire picture of biodiversity. I was like, 'Hold my beer'.' The swim will see Edgley cover more than 30km per day as he chips away at the 1,610km total. And the journey is unlikely to be plain sailing. Between 100ft waves, 100mph winds, sub-zero temperatures and sharing the water with orcas (an animal unnervingly nicknamed 'the killer whale'), Edgley has more to contend with than exhaustion. 'I'm told the wildlife will be friendly,' he says. 'There's never been a reported case of an orca attacking a human, they're that intelligent, so I think they'll just come over and go, 'What are you doing in the Arctic Circle? You're not a seal, so we'll just leave you alone'.' 'I think the main challenge will be how bleak and beautiful the landscape is. It's interesting because around Great Britain you pretty much always had a harbour, but around certain parts of Iceland there are just sheer cliff faces. If a storm rolls, I'm hiding in a tiny crack in a mountain and hoping for it to pass.' As far as sports science is concerned, this is uncharted territory, so how does one train to swim 1,000 miles while surviving the elements and evading would-be predators? With great grit, effort and attention to detail, it transpires. A typical week ahead of the Big Icelandic Swim Training: 'I want to be as fat as possible but as fit as possible, very much like an orca' The overarching goal of Edgley's training for the Big Icelandic Swim was to get 'fatter and fitter'. 'It's basic physiology – body fat is insulating and muscle mass is thermic,' he says. 'It sounds really counterintuitive for a swimmer to want to be as big as possible, but I'm taking swimming and moving outside the realms of conventional sports science.' 'That's why I want to be as fat as possible but as fit as possible, very much like an orca. They're these huge animals, then they're just poetic in the water.' To do this, Edgley inhaled food (more on this below). He also headed up to Ullapool in Scotland for a cold-weather training camp, and spent a large chunk of it partially submerged. 'The training is really simple in theory but brutal in reality,' Edgley explains. 'In Iceland I'll be working with the tide for six hours, resting, going with the tide for another six hours, then resting again. It's a biphasic sleep pattern, and you're looking at a total of 12 hours of swimming per day, so that's what we've built up to in training.' He also did roughly three strength training sessions each week to support his efforts in the water. But the focus wasn't on mirror muscles. 'So often people think about strength training as something you do to build muscles, but I'm looking more at the ligaments, tendons and connective tissue,' says Edgley. 'When you're swimming, particularly in waves, your whole body is contorting and your ligaments, tendons and connective tissues are all straining.' 'But there have been so many studies recently showing the benefits of strength training for endurance sports. It's called mechanotransduction; the idea that by applying stress and stimuli to a joint, it [the composite tissues] actually responds as well.' Edgley uses strength training to bulletproof his joints so they can handle Icelandic seas. This involves a lot of work with Therabands and cables, as well as exercises hanging from a pull-up bar. He also uses compound moves to strengthen the muscles in his back largely responsible for propelling him through the water. His workouts are efficient too – they have to be. 'People think of workouts as an hour in the gym, but I have to habituate 12 hours of swimming a day,' he says. 'I don't often have time for a full hour, so sometimes I'll be in and out [of the gym] in 30 minutes. 'I do a lot of stuff that is very specific, hammering pull-ups and bent-over rows. Then there's a lot of Theraband work, isometrics, eccentric work and putting the shoulder joint in weird places where it might experience those stress stimuli out at sea. 'There's a lot of hanging work and cables as well. It looks so odd; I would almost have to demonstrate them to you. I train in my garage because I swear if I did half of this stuff in a commercial gym I would get kicked out.' Diet: 'Essentially you have a calzone pizza baguette – it's amazing' Putting on weight when you're swimming in a nippy Scottish loch for most of your waking hours is no mean feat. The key is consuming roughly 10,000 calories per day. 'People say never eat and swim, but that's all I do'; my training is like an eating competition with a bit of swimming,' Edgley laughs. 'It's really cool how we're challenging long-held beliefs of sports nutrition.' 'I'm swimming for 12 hours per day, trying to hit 120g of carbs every hour, on the hour, because that's the upper limit of what the human digestive system can absorb, assimilate and use. 'And I have my tow float that's just full of MyPro energy gels and electrofuel, so I'm constantly chugging those as people in nearby cruise ships watch on.' Edgley also aims for 1.7g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day, ('That's the International Olympic Committee consensus on sports nutrition, which I've always found works really well') and supplements his diet with the likes of medium chain triglycerides and Myprotein green superfoods to fill his micronutrient needs. However, it's at this point that things get a little bit weird. 'I'm trying to make up the calories as cleanly as possible,' Edgley says. 'But it's incredibly difficult to eat 10,000 calories cleanly. At some point you just have to start making it up [with foods that are] a little bit dirtier. And if I don't, because of my high calorie expenditure, I'll lose weight. 'I have weight gain shakes. Then a particular favourite meal of mine, which I've refined since the Great British swim, is a 12in baguette rolled up inside a pizza. Essentially you have a calzone pizza baguette – it's amazing.' To aid the bulking up process, Edgley also enlisted help of a couple of experts: elite strongman athletes Luke and Tom Stoltman. 'Tom is 175kg at the moment, which he says is very lean and svelte for him,' Edgley says. 'It's been awesome taking principles of strongman and applying them to swimming – two sports you think would never actually meet.' 'I went for a swim with them, and I'm pretty decent in the cold, but I ended up getting out and reaching for my woolly hat and DryRobe. I asked if they wanted to get in the car and have some gloves, and they were just walking around in their trunks going, 'Nah, nah, we're fine'. Steam was coming off them, like bison in the winter. It's amazing witnessing how resilient they are to the cold because of their physiology, so that's something I've been trying to replicate.' The heavyweight trio went out for a meal during their time together and, needless to say, their table drew a few confused looks. 'We each sat there with burgers [plural], milkshakes and fries with cheese, then we also had our multivitamins, supergreens and glutamine,' Edgley says. 'People think that looks like such an oxymoron of a diet, but under very unique circumstances, when you want to get fatter and fitter, it is actually the optimal diet for what I'm trying to achieve. I wouldn't recommend it for 99.99 per cent of people, but for me it's working.' Recovery: 'My body will wonder what I'm doing' Edgley enjoys pushing the boundaries of sports science, but he also stresses the importance of nailing the basics when attempting any physical feat. For this reason, sleep remains his go-to recovery tool. 'Through my challenges, sleeping is something I've become so good at,' he says. 'What's going to be especially interesting is the biphasic sleep – sleeping twice per day – and getting into that routine.' Cycling six-hour stints in the water and in bed is sure to discombobulate his circadian rhythm – our internal 24-hour body clock which tells us to be alert in the day and wind back at night. Edgley is using supplements in an attempt to combat this messaging. 'That could mean looking at zinc, magnesium and cherry extract to try to boost the body's production of melatonin [to aid sleep]. Anything that can almost biohack my circadian rhythm. My body will wonder what I'm doing because I'm swimming when I should be asleep, so I'm saying, 'Here, have some ZMA, stay alert'.'| 'I know I'm going to ask my body for so much, so any supplement support that can make the process a bit kinder is something I'm going to try to use.' What's next: 'Storms of snow and sand and volcanic ash' Final preparations aside, the next thing on Edgley's agenda is to hop in the Icelandic water and start swimming. 'We're looking at May 16 as the start date,' he says. 'I'm doing it with Clipper Ventures. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first guy to go solo around the world, it's his company – he's a legend. They've told me, 'On May 16 we'll look out at Reykjavik, and barring an absolutely wild storm we'll set sail and gun it around clockwise'.' But with Iceland's climate, adverse weather isn't out of the question, and Edgley will be hoping for amenable conditions. 'It's obviously called the land of fire and ice, and people have been talking about these storms of snow and sand and volcanic ash – that's nuts,' he says with another characteristic grin. Edgley gives the distinct impression that he's a foreigner to fear and nervousness. Both appear to have been displaced by a generous helping of enthusiasm. And it's this keenness for adventure, twinned with sports science principles – and a 12in baguette wrapped in a pizza – that stands to help him expand his impressive (if bizarre) list of achievements in Iceland.
