Why Did Ross Edgley Hide Rocks in His Backpack?

Ross Edgley hid rocks in his backpack at ten because a huge hike with his dad and two brothers was not enough of a challenge, and he wanted the harder version for himself. He says his dopamine works a bit differently, and even then he knew he was wired a little weirdly. The process was its own reward.

Andrew Huberman asked whether Ross would still have loaded the rocks if he had been hiking alone. Ross says he would. He kept the rocks secret. When his dad found them, he told Ross to take them out and offered food that was actually functional. Getting home knowing he had done the harder hike was the point. Thirty years on, Ross says he is still doing the same thing with swim ideas. If someone hears an idea and calls it quite good, he drops it. If they call it impossible or absurd, as with swimming around Great Britain or swimming around Iceland, he keeps it.

By thirty-two, when he swam around Great Britain, he says the drive had become ego. He points to Captain Webb, who in 1875 was the first person to swim the English Channel, living on beef broth and brandy and using breaststroke because front crawl was seen as ungentlemanly. Webb wanted to pioneer what people understood about swimming and human endurance, and Ross says the Britain swim was the same kind of project.