Sunday, 1 April 2007

Apnea@Altitude freediving competition, Taupo, NZ, 30/3 to 1/4 2007

My competition results:
-31m Constant weight without fins - New NZ women's record
4:16s Static
110m Dynamic without fins - Disqualified due to black out.

I was sadly, once again the only woman taking part, so won the women's competition.

I went up for a training session in Lake Taupo the day before the competition, but as usual for depth events in NZ we had a cyclone come through. I still dived but it was pretty rough - managed to choke on water when a wave washed over me while I was taking my last breath. Didn't get as deep as I'd hoped so announced a conservative performance of 31m for the competition, with the expectation that the conditions would not improve.

It rained pretty heavily the night before the competition started and I was a bit concerned about the tent flying away! Fortunately I got through the night fine and the tent didn't start leaking until the morning...

The competition organisers managed to fine a nice calm spot in the lea of the island, so the condidtions were superb. The water was calm, no current, about 15m visibility and 18 degrees on the surface. Despite feeling ill (from nerves) in the minutes leading up to my dive, my dive felt great. It was a comfortable swim down and back - my only issue was that I took about 7 seconds trying to retrieve my tag from the base plate.

Everyone did fantastically well on the first day of the competition - we all reach our announced performances and came up clean. Dave Mullins briefly broke the NZ men's constant weight record (with fins) with a dive to -80m, but the next competitor, Ant Williams reached a depth of -82m to regain his record.

Day 2 was statics. The sun actually came out and it was quite pleasant. We relocated the event from the 19 degree outdoor unheated pool at Taupo Intermediate to the the AC Baths, where we had 26 degrees. Unfortunately nobody acheived any really notable performances in statics. I was 1:30s off my best. My contractions started very early around 2:15s, and in the end I didn't push it through to my limits as I was so far away from anything I would be happy with anyway. I need to do a lot more work in my statics training before the worlds...


A big, but really short storm blew through during the night. Poor Blair (our new diver) pretty much lost the fly for his tent and had to get up and re-peg it down in the heavy rain.

Day 3 was dynamics. I selected to do dynamics without fins. I pushed it a bit far and don't recall any of my dive beyond the 100m turn, but did come up on my own before falling back into the water. Anyway, I feel I'm on track for my training for the world champs in July for this event. It can only get better... This was the first time that I've been DQ'd in competition and I don't intend it to happen again.

Thanks so much to all the people who helped out - there were as many helpers and officials as there were competitors!



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