Wellington Winter Champs 2013

Great competition on the weekend: the Wellington Winter Champs (8th annual - I'm starting to feel like an old timer), hosted by the Lazy Seal Freediving Club in Porirua. You can find the Lazy Seals on Facebook too - some competition photos and videos are available there now.

My performances came up a little better than anticipated. I pulled out a pretty comfortable 7min 24s static breath hold. First contraction was around 4:15 which is pretty unheard of (remembering that I do no "breathe up" or warm up - I just relax, take a breath and go).7:24 is a mere 10s off my best, which is pretty positive for the future as I only stepped up my training in about the month beforehand, and not really to the level I'd like to be at, and am not feeling particularly in form.

I did a token dynamic in the afternoon - it hurt a bit after the morning's static and I haven't trained long dynamics for about 4 months, so the lactic was fairly intense. I really just did it to encourage the spirit of the competition (we had lots of beginners) and because I'm not feeling particularly in form (ie wasn't about to better a world record the following day), but it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be starting out. I achieved 151m with a little left in the tank. Might have to start training it a bit more. Pools are challenging over winter - our training pool is very shallow with sharp tiles that destroy your fin in the deep end and make it virtually impossible to turn in the shallow end. Plus it's pretty crowded - we're lucky to squeeze in at all most weeks.

On Sunday morning I did a 152m dynamic without fins. It's only my second DNF over 150m this year (managed one the weekend before), so I was pretty happy. I felt quite tired after 100m thanks to the previous day's events. I managed to win the competition and beat the boys, which is nice, but they weren't in the greatest form either.

Thanks Marine for organising. Well done to all the new divers who set a massive amount of personal bests. We hope to see you all again and get you hooked on the sport. Also thanks to Odette for offering the prize of a 1 hour massage. I still owe you your coaching prize when you get some spare time to train again.

The next competition will be August, organised by the Breathtakers Freediving Club (me probably). We're deciding where and when in the next couple of weeks - Masterton/Palmerston North/Ohakea or maybe a mixture.