Annals of Ambition–Round The World Swim!? It’s hard to know whether to take this seriously or not, but there is a 36-year old Brit named Robert Garside who has announced that starting next June he will start swimming…and will keep swimming, and swimming, and swimming, until he laps the planet. The total will be about 25, 000 miles and he plans to start in Greece, swim the Med, head down the coast of Africa to Morocco, across the Atlantic to Brazil, north to the Panama Canal, across to the Pacific (what will he put on his canal permit?), across the Pacific to the Galapagos, then Tahiti, and on to Australia and Indonesia–pause for breath–and finally back up to the Red Sea and into the Med via Suez (if he can get past the US Navy on the lookout for swimming terrorists). His plan is to sleep in an egg-shaped carbon fiber capsule that he will tow attached to his foot, and to swim about 6-7 hours a day–wearing a wetsuit, flippers, goggles and a snorkel. Garside expects the whole enchilada will take up to 6 years. Yup, that’s years. And he says he hopes various boats and national coast guards will help deliver food and water. Err, hopes? Okay, this thing is totally insane and I love it. The only reason to give Garside any credence at all is the following: he has already circumnavigated the globe once, running 35,000 miles and burning through 50 pairs of sneakers (he was jailed in China and mugged in Panama). Yes, some critics caught him flying 800 miles from Mexico City to the US border, but give the guy a break. This has to go down as the most ambitious, insane adventure EVER announced….so I hope to hell he goes through with it.



25,000 miles?: The prune factor alone will be off the charts…..