Her next feat: Swim the ocean

"I'm saving lots of money," she joked. "I only have to buy a one-way ticket."

The way Figge sees it, she's been planning the expedition since she was 11 years old.

During a flight to Italy with her mother, a storm was brewing below the plane. While most children would have been scared, Figge had other thoughts.

"I told my mother, 'I hope that lightning hits the plane and we get to go down in the middle of the Atlantic and get into those cool life vests and swim the rest of the way,' " she said.

She and her family have always lived a bit large. Her mother was a longtime professional opera singer. Her husband was a successful banker who is now retired. And Figge's son, Alex, is a racecar driver in the LeMans Series.

It was through him that she found endurance sports. He asked her to stop smoking for his 7th birthday, and when she did, she had to replace her cigarette addiction with another habit.

The answer? The Davenport, Iowa, native completed the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa in 1990 with her husband.

She was hooked.

In all, Figge has now conquered more than 3,000 miles running and crossed almost 25 channels swimming (they have ranged from 8 miles in length to a few hundred miles), battling the elements all over the planet.

She fought through 8-foot swells and was stung by a man-of-war on her left leg during a 52-mile, three-day swim from Cay Sal Bank north of Cuba to Marathon Key last year. She outran hungry dogs during a 350-mile run across Romania. She swam through waters contaminated with sheep manure when she crossed the Straits of Tiran off Egypt, and wind gusts near 80 miles per hours lifted her off her feet in the Black Sand Desert during a 300-mile run across Iceland.

Each time, she was left wanting more.

"I haven't really had many challenges in life, so I have to challenge myself," Figge said. "Pushing myself to the limit is the only way I know how."

Figge would not be the first to swim across the Atlantic, but she apparently would be the first woman.