Wellington Winter Champs 2010

Sorry for my poor updating skills lately. With commuting to work (through snow and ice in the dark twice a day over NZ's highest sealed road), working long hours and the local pool being shut for maintenance, I haven't had a lot of time or energy to dive lately or really do anything recreational. I'm having a day off work today thanks to the heavy snowfall to low levels on the Crown Range that stopped me getting through early this morning.

I started organising the Wellington Winter Champs for the Lazy Seal Freediving Club before I took the job in Queenstown, but managed to get it done without too much stress, thanks to my supporters in Wellington.

I went up there not expecting too much from myself. One pool session a week and a couple of dry breath holds don't really account to enough training in my mind. Anyway, the competition was good fun, with half the competitors using this as their very first comp. We had the rec grade who blew us away with their abilities (a little too good for a fun grade I must say).

I managed a 5:59 static, 151m dynamic and 154m dynamic without fins. The last one surprised me, but perhaps the training (two comp dives) the day before plus a couple of good sleeps really helped. Before you say anything about the comparison of the two distances, I hadn't really been training with the fin on and it just felt heavy and sluggish - I'm working on that now... In the no fins event I received a red card, but managed to get it overturned in a protest that went on for 11 days and was taken to the top AIDA International judges for debate. I exited, supporting myself on the side of the pool, where unfortunately the judge's foot was marking my distance. So, I touched it accidentally and any touch from another person in the 30s after surfacing is disqualification. My protest did not deny that this happened but that it was an error of the officials, therefore should be counted in the favour of the diver.

Full results are available on the Lazy Seal Freediving Club website: http://www.lazyseal.co.nz/content/results
The Lazy Seals are also on Facebook if you're keen to know what the club is up to and see some photos from the competition.