She didn't even make the swimming team at Gospel Oak primary school, but thirty years later Jessica Hepburn swam the Channel.
Not only that, but she became the first woman on the planet to complete the 'Sea Street Summit challenge' of running the London Marathon, climbing Mt Everest, and swimming the stretch of water separating England and France.
And to top it all, the Hampstead resident has listened to all 3,000 episodes of her favourite programme Desert Island Discs.
The arts administrator turned 'adventure activist' is the first to admit she's an "unlikely athlete", but it was a series of heartbreaks that spurred her on.
Eleven gruelling rounds of failed IVF followed by relationship failure had left her broken.
Her latest book Save Me From The Waves (Aurum £17.99) details her journey back to happiness, which included feats of mental and physical endurance and a life threatening event on top of Everest.
"I was always the arty one never the sporty one," says Hepburn, who ran The Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith for a decade.
"Mentally I am tough but physically I am weak.
"I had this secret that I was going through round after round of IVF and multiple miscarriages. When I went through my 11th failed round I thought 'I need to do something different. I have lost a decade of my life to project baby, I am going to swim the English Channel.' Which is nuts! I wasn't even a good swimmer."
She laughs that there was a formative moment aged 10 when she failed to make the school swimming gala at Kentish Town baths
"Dad tried to console me, I wanted to make him proud and that's where it lodged, I didn't think about it for 30 years."
She wrote about her infertility 10 years ago in her first book 21 Miles, followed by The Pursuit of Motherhood.
It "catapulted" her into the public eye as an infertility spokeswoman, she organised a themed arts festival and gave talks, but says it was heartbreak that drove her up the mountain.
"After all that IVF my relationship broke down, we sold our house and I moved back to my childhood home in Hampstead in my mid-40s with no child and no relationship. I felt a failure.
"I went on this journey, I started to do these physical challenges that I find really hard. It was like a version of self harm, releasing the pain I was in - there's nothing harder than getting into cold water with no wetsuit and swimming for 20 hours."
Divided into chapters such as 'songs of childhood', 'love songs' and happy songs' the former Camden School for Girls pupil says Save Me From The Waves is as much about music as it is about climbing mountains.
Covid stopped her first attempt to climb Everest, then the second time she fell ill before reaching the top. But on her third attempt, she succeeded at the age of 51.
"I knew if I didn't get to the top then, that was it. I didn't have it in me to go back again."
But after the "absolute joy" of reaching the summit, she nearly died in a "freak accident" on the way back down.
"I was in the death zone where you can't be rescued. I looked death in the face on the mountain and I had this moment when I realised if I wanted to live, my best chance was me. I couldn't rely on anyone else.
"The experience made me want to live life more than ever. I wouldn't change a thing."
She's now an advocate for the power of adventure to change lives, insisting it doesn't have to be as extreme as climbing Everest, it could be just doing something "new and risky".
"Something that requires courage but makes you feel alive and energised, that helps you build the resilience, self esteem to face the trails of life," she says.
"We all have sad stuff. Mine is that I couldn't have a baby with the man who remains the love of my life. That broke me, but you have to turn it into something good for yourself or other people. We are here for such a tiny amount of time."
Hepburn is proud that she "played a small part" in changing discussions around infertility and making the subject less taboo.
"That doesn't mean that there isn't lots more work to do, some shame still persists. I was so secret about it but once I started talking about it, it made me realise the route to happiness is to be open about the things you are most ashamed of.
"Not being able to have a baby is not all of me, it's only one part of me. The adventures have made me a more rounded person. This is the whole me and I feel really good about it - I am living the best and happiest life I have ever lived."
And Hepburn, who grew up in Parliament Hill living with extended family, has decided she's happy in her childhood home, which her grandparents bought back in 1919.
"It's weird, as a child all I wanted to do was get away from this house. It was like a pressure cooker of tensions with parents, uncle, aunt and cousins.
"Everyone was tied to this house. My grandmother (the feminist poet Anna Wickham) took her own life here, my dad found her, and he could never leave. We were all dominated by this matriarchal figure.
"But the adventures in their own ways have been so healing. I feel differently about the house and so lucky to be here. My cousin and I inherited it, we were going to sell it, but we made the decision to keep it."
After achieving so many goals, Hepburn adds that her main ambition now is "to become a kinder, wiser, more courageous human being, hopefully inspiring other people to live their best lives."
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