And the competition continues...

Last night I resisted the overwhelming temptation to have a glass of red wine (it's not as good as what we have at home anyway) and cooked myself a huge feast of lamb chop, fresh veges and pasta. Very tasty. I managed to get a good sleep of almost ten hours, despite the rooster's regular interventions and Fran my room mate cursing it on several occasions. I awoke very stiff. I had all the usual pains through my neck, shoulders and lower back, but just a little more intense than usual, and then some new ones in both arms at the base of the tricep and both legs at the base of the quads. I rubbed Anti-Flamme all over and did some stretching. It helped a little but not a lot. Problems with doing nothing I suspect.

I nominated 48m constant weight without fins for today, to set a new national record and give myself a bit more confidence after a couple of tiny surface black outs after diving to 50m. I again dived without a wetsuit, as this means I can go without the weightbelt so it is much more comfortable. I don't need a warm up so have just been getting in about 1:30s before my top with my nose clip already on. I had a bit of a rough start as I had been focusing on my ascent during visualisation more than the descent in order to try to relax a bit more down there. Kerian said that I didn't look nearly as comfortable as usual through this point of the dive. The contractions came early, about on my last stroke downwards, so probably around 20m under. I tried to ignore them as it's usually quite a good dive when they come on early. The descent was mentally difficult with thoughts of turning early and general discomfort. But before I knew it I saw the 5m mark whizz past and I held out for the base plate. I grabbed at the striped rope indicating 1.5m to the base plate, spun around, grabbed the tag, stuck it to my lanyard belt and started the ascent. I reminded myself throughout the entire ascent “Kathryn, relax, focus...” Finally it worked and I had a good ascent. I swam up setting up a good rhythm. Peter the safety diver appeared in front of me and I took a few more strokes before allowing myself to drift up to the surface to grab the rope, breathe and give my surface protocol to the judges, scoring my 4th national record for the competition. I will try for 50m again tomorrow.

Two world records fell today. Kiwi William Trubridge did a free immersion dive to 107m and Russian Natalia Avseenko finally achieved 57m in constant without fins (pushing out my future goals a little!).