What Are You Capable Of?
I’m friends with a half-dozen people who’ve climbed to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro - the highest mountain in all of Africa. I also know someone (we’re not friends but we connected once) who summited Mt. Everest. This guy is also the first person to ever bear crawl a marathon (Google this. It might be the most impressive/unfathomable thing you’ve ever seen).
I have multiple friends who’ve completed 100 mile runs, long-distance swims, and Ironman competitions.
My former coach is an Olympic swimmer who won the Coeur-Dalene Ironman in Idaho and placed 4th in the Kona Ironman in Hawaii.
My current coach (one of the people who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro) is also an Ironman veteran who just ran a marathon along the Great Wall of China.
I know a woman who ran a 31 mile race in Washington state, in the woods, in Autumn, where at points, she had to swim across ice cold lakes, get out and keep running. There were only a handful of checkpoints, so she had gummies and pouches stuffed into plastic bags that she rolled into her bathing suit to keep them dry. At one point, the signage was unclear and she ran 5 miles in the wrong direction. Of course, she then had to run 5 more miles back in the right direction. She finished last as a result and immediately signed up to do it again the following year.
Some of you may be thinking right now, “That’s cool, Michael. But these are all impressive physical feats. I’m not an athlete, so I don’t really care.”
Okay, let me tell you about a man named Nelson Dellis. I met Dellis at a conference in 2019. He was a regular guy whose grandmother suffered from and ultimately died from Alzheimer’s Disease. In an attempt to keep his brain as sharp as possible, he began memorizing everything he could: names, numbers, dates, countries, etc.
As of this writing, he’s a six-time USA Memory Champion (yep, that’s a thing) who holds multiple Guinness World Records including memorizing an entire deck of shuffled cards (in order) in 41 seconds and memorizing 235 people’s names in 15 minutes.
He also memorized PI to 10,000 digits. This is obviously very hard to test for, so at the competition, they’d give competitors a five-digit sequence. To prove they knew where it landed, they would need to name the five digits before and after it.
You may be thinking that these people are just superhumans. But they’re not. I know them and they’d tell you they’re not.
Don’t believe me?
In 2022, after being challenged (by that first coach I wrote about above) to run a marathon, I did. On six weeks training never having run more than three miles continuously in my life.
Was I miserable during it? Yep. Did I finish? You bet.
If you know me, you know I’m a nut when it comes to language. In fact, I’m so passionate about it, I’m writing a book about it.
Anything that sounds like a person giving their power away to some unreal, untrue entity, drives me crazy. It’s because I know what people are capable of. I’ve seen it. I’ve been it.
Like the t-shirt that reads, “But First, Coffee.” Implying that the person wearing it just can’t think straight until they’ve had a cup.
C’mon, that’s just not true.
Or the leader who recently told me, as half their team rolled into a meeting late, “Mondays, am I right?”
No, you are not right.
If you listen closely, so many people are doing this so often, it can become like water to the fish: so close to us that we may not even realize that there’s an entire world above it.
So, speaking of water, I’m sharing below the story of a man named Ross Edgley. He’s the first person to swim around all of Great Britain. I shared, briefly, about Edgley a few years ago, when I first heard of him, but he’s worth revisiting.
I didn’t write the piece (it’s not attributed to anyone), but I did edit it for length.
Enjoy!
On June 1, 2018, Ross Edgley walked into the ocean at Margate, England, with a simple but insane plan: swim around the entire island of Great Britain without touching land. Not once.
The plan sounded impossible because it was. No human had ever done it. Several had tried and failed. The coastline stretched 1,780 miles through some of the world's most dangerous waters—past shipping lanes carrying massive cargo vessels, through tidal currents that could sweep swimmers miles off course, around rocky headlands where waves smashed with enough force to kill.
He dove in anyway.
The deterioration began almost immediately.
Saltwater is corrosive. Human bodies aren't designed for continuous immersion in it. Within days, Edgley's skin began breaking down. Constant chafing from the wetsuit and movement created raw wounds that couldn't heal because they never dried. His hands swelled grotesquely from osmotic pressure, looking like inflated rubber gloves.
But the worst damage was happening in his mouth.
The constant exposure to salt water—drinking accidentally, breathing spray, hours with face partially submerged—began destroying his tongue. The soft tissue started disintegrating. Salt crystals formed in the wounds. Speaking became painful. Eating became agony. By week three, portions of his tongue had essentially eroded away.
Edgley's support team consulted doctors. The medical advice was unanimous: stop.
Edgley kept swimming.
He adapted by eating soft foods, rinsing constantly with fresh water, and accepting that pain would be his constant companion.
As summer progressed, new challenges emerged. Jellyfish season arrived. Edgley swam through swarms of them, collecting stings across his face, neck, and exposed skin. Each sting burned. Hundreds of stings burned continuously. There was no way to avoid them—they were simply part of the ecosystem he was moving through.
Then came the storms.
Summer storms rolled through with regularity, bringing massive swells, driving rain, and dangerous currents. During storms, Edgley had two choices: stay on the boat and lose days of progress, or swim through conditions that could kill him.
He swam.
The mental challenge exceeded the physical. Endurance athletes talk about "the pain cave"—the psychological space where your body is screaming to stop but your mind must override every survival instinct to continue. Edgley lived in the pain cave for 157 consecutive days.
His body was consuming itself. Despite eating three to four times normal caloric intake, Edgley lost significant weight. His muscles were breaking down from constant use. His immune system was compromised from sleep deprivation and stress. He developed infections. His joints ached constantly.
Again, medical professionals monitoring his condition told him to stop.
Edgley kept swimming.
Around the two-month mark, Edgley reached Scotland's northern coast—some of the most dangerous waters in his route. The Pentland Firth, between mainland Scotland and the Orkney Islands, is notorious. Tidal currents there can reach 12 knots—faster than Olympic swimmers can swim. Get the timing wrong and the ocean simply pushes you backward regardless of effort.
Edgley's team calculated tide windows carefully. They had narrow time slots when currents would be manageable. Miss the window and they'd lose days waiting for the next opportunity. The pressure was enormous—months of effort could be wasted by a single navigation error.
They threaded the needle perfectly. Edgley swam through the Pentland Firth during a favorable tide window, making progress that should have been impossible. It was calculated risk backed by preparation, but success still required executing perfectly while exhausted and damaged.
As autumn approached, the water temperature dropped. Edgley's wetsuit provided some protection, but hours of immersion in 50-degree water extracts heat faster than the human body can generate it.
He began shivering uncontrollably during swims. His speech slurred from the cold when he climbed onto the support boat. His core temperature dropped into dangerous zones.
He kept swimming.
By October, he had been in the water for 130 days. Britain's southwestern coast lay ahead—the home stretch. But "home stretch" is relative when you're swimming dozens of miles daily through autumn storms around rocky coastlines notorious for shipwrecks.
He was reaching his limits. Sleep deprivation, constant pain, relentless cold, and months of psychological pressure were accumulating into a debt that couldn't be repaid while still swimming.
His crew watched him carefully for signs he was approaching breakdown.
The final stretch along England's southern coast brought new dangers: massive shipping traffic. The English Channel is one of the busiest shipping lanes on Earth. Cargo vessels, tankers, ferries—hundreds of ships daily moving through waters where Edgley was swimming. Each vessel represented a potential collision that could kill him instantly.
On November 4, 2018—157 days after starting—Ross Edgley completed the final miles approaching Margate, where he had begun. Crowds gathered on the beach. Media boats surrounded him. The man who had been alone in the ocean for five months was suddenly swimming through a celebration.
When he finally touched the beach—the first land contact in 157 days—his legs barely supported him. Muscle had atrophied. Balance was compromised. Walking felt foreign after so long in the water. He collapsed on the sand, overwhelmed, exhausted, triumphant.
He had swum 1,780 miles. 2,864 kilometers. Around the entire island of Great Britain without touching land until the finish. First person in history to do it.
The real achievement was the daily choice—for 157 consecutive days—to get back in the water despite pain, despite damage, despite every rational reason to stop.
That's the part that makes Ross Edgley's swim more than just a record. It's a demonstration of human will overcoming human limitation. Of mind conquering the body's desperate pleas to quit. Of setting an impossible goal and refusing to accept the rational arguments for why it can't be done.
Edgley's swim attracted global media attention, raised significant money for ocean conservation, and inspired thousands to reconsider their own limits. But perhaps more importantly, it forced revision of what we believe humans can endure.
Medical textbooks said the damage he sustained should have forced him to stop. Sports science said the caloric demands couldn't be sustained. Marine experts said the tides and shipping traffic made it too dangerous. Previous failed attempts said it was impossible.
Ross Edgley said otherwise.
Sometimes the most important discoveries about human capability come not from laboratories but from individuals willing to push themselves beyond every reasonable limit to see what's actually possible.
Ross Edgley swam around Britain to find out.
The answer was: more than anyone thought.
So, are Mondays really that tough? Do you need that cup of coffee? Or, are you capable of way more than you’re giving yourself credit for?
