Kathryn McPhee

Results from the DNF finals

2011-10-16T01:51:00.001+13:00

Event four – Dynamic without fins finals

2011-10-16T01:39:00.000+13:00

Last night the finals were run for the dynamic withoutfins event. As previously mentioned there were 23 men and 23 women in thefinals with two divers run at a time. The finals were scheduled to occurbetween 5 and 8 pm. Obviously that was never going to happen since 23 startsrequiring a minimum of 10 minutes each does not fit into 3 hours, but no onewould commit to any schedule changes prior to our announcements. I announced127m, the second highest. I really didn’t care too much about what the othersdid but like to have a high announcement in case of a draw in the results (thehigher announced performances wins). I wasn’t very happy to find that my OfficialTop (start time) would be 8:40pm. This is very late for me. I also had to havea Lepin squeezy prior to my dive to keep my energy up (since dinner was solate), which I’m pretty sure kept me awake until very late last night alongwith the judges having a good chat on our floor until 1am (there is no soundproofing).

The day dragged and slowly moved from 12 hours toofficial top until I finally found myself in the pool. I’ve only experiencedthis once before when I had 12 hours between dives in Aarhus. My static was in themorning and then I had to wait around forever to do my no fins final, which wasa pretty miserable performance. Yesterday I did try to move my day slightly,getting up and eating later than usual.

Anyway, my dive felt fine. I was a bit slow taking myfinal breath (I seem to be packing a lot more than usual, so must focus ondoing good big packs) and possibly missed out on a few packs as I dipped myhead under at Official Top + 9s (more than 10s is a penalty). I was prettyrelaxed and any negative thoughts that popped into my head disappeared asquickly as they came. I came up when I needed to breathe which was 148m(remember this is an Olympic 50m pool, which reduces DNF performance length). Ididn’t know I was so close to the wall, but I did know that if I touched thewall I’d win gold. Anyway, I needed to breathe so that was it and I won silver.

Congratulations to Jody from Australia who won gold (150m)and Dajana from Croatia who won bronze (153m with a 5 point (10m) penalty).Also congratulations to the men: Fred from France won gold with 207m, Goranfrom Croatia silver with 194m and Rune from Denmark bronze with 193m. KiwiWilliam Trubridge came 4^th with 174m losing his bronze after Runewon his protest. Chris did a massive 161m personal best and ended up 8^th.Guy did not participate in this event.

I have announced much lower for the Dynamic final tonightto try to dive earlier. I’ll be on at 6:20pm. I hope that the low announcementdoesn’t turn around and bite me as my competitors have all announced higher. Ialso wanted to maximise my break between dynamic and static tomorrow morningand actually be able to watch some other people’s performances.

The schedule has now changed to run 4pm – 8pm tonight. Rememberthat you can watch the live stream on-line at www.europeevolutioncup.com.

Results from the heats

2011-10-14T00:04:00.005+13:00

Here are the results from the heats. Yellow highlighting indicates the 23 finalists.

Event three – static apnea heats

2011-10-13T23:56:00.000+13:00

The static heats were last night. They ran all the heatsin one session as opposed to splitting them over two evenings as they did withthe dynamics. It was good to do them all at once, but did mean it was a littledifficult coaching the rest of the NZ team and the honourary Kiwi stragglers we’vepicked up (Bjarte from Norway and Jodie from Australia who are here alone).Luckily we were all at different times. I unfortunately didn’t manage to seemany divers but from the results lists you can see that mostly white cards weregiven out. The boys had a cut off of 6:06 for the 23 person finals and thegirls were around low four minutes, so it was much as we’d expected going in.There were some impressive performances and I think there are some new diversthat could surprise us with really great dives in the finals – watch out forthe girls especially.

I coached Chris through a tough 5:24 static. He was inthe second heat and this really is not his favourite event, but I’m pleased hedid not pull out too early, I’m sure he was tempted.

I then disappearedto my room and rested for a couple of hours prior to my check in time. Myofficial top was 6:58 pm (quite late to wait around for) and the little poolarea is generally quite hot with not many chairs so it’s more comfortable tonot stay there any longer than necessary before diving.

I got into a greatrelaxed state (almost asleep) prior to changing, but struggled a bitafter. I found the pool very deep and itwas difficult to get comfortable with my head resting on the side. It’s meantto be 1.4m in the deep end and the organisers provided umbrella stands forthose of us who could not reach the bottom very well, but they only gave usanother 100mm. I’m not that short so I’m sure the Japanese ladies struggledmuch more. I don’t warm up so need to take the time to relax prior to my dive. Imight just sit on the side for the finals and get in later. Anyway, having nottrained a lot of statics in the last couple of months (unintentionally – itjust worked out that way around travel and the last competition, plus my statictraining dive on arrival was aborted thanks to immense jet lag and a cold pool).I struggled a little more than usual with my contractions, and had a prettystrong heart beat for the first 2 or 3 minutes, not fast, just heavy. The contractionsstarted pretty early for me, which I found a bit disappointing, but they werenot too big or regular and I mostly managed to remain in control and prettyrelaxed. The dive was fine and I have plenty left – in fact it was one of thefirst times I’ve gone over 6:30 without feeling very tired after. Just three orfour hook breaths and I’d pretty much recovered. So I ended up first qualifierfor the women’s final with 6:34. Hopefully this was a good training dive forthe final and that my body is starting to remember so I’ll be a bit morerelaxed for Sunday!

Guy did an easy 7:11 dive and William 7:02 for easyqualification to the finals. They were both just before me so I unfortunately completelymissed their dives.

The static heats had four people at a time, startingevery 14 minutes, ordered from smallest to largest announced performance. Theorganisers have LED displays of the times in each lane so spectators can seewhere the divers are up to and how much they achieved. It’s really great,otherwise you just have no idea unless you sit there with a stopwatch andreally focus. It’ll be good for coaches and team captains in the finals too.Unfortunately they were announcing (in Italian) throughout the performances,but it didn’t really throw me, probably because I can’t understand it anyway –I barely recognise my own name.

The time for the static finals has changed to 9am Sunday finishingaround mid-day in order to be able to complete protests, doping tests, etcprior to the closing ceremony. It’s not going to be fun for anyone to have todo a late doping test at about 10pm after dynamic followed by an early start instatic. Remember that the finals will be live streamed on www.europeevolutioncup.com and www.evolutiontv.com

Event two – Dynamic with fins heats

2011-10-11T23:22:00.003+13:00

Day four of competition is now over. We have had two moredays of heats, this time the Dynamic (with fins) event. Again 23 men and womenwill proceed to the finals, leaving about 10-15 of each without a spot. A goodclean dive is almost a sure entry ticket to the finals with just a few of thenewer divers or those who made mistakes missing out, but many pleasantlysurprising themselves with a place.

Many of the competition issues have now been sorted.Announcements are in a mix of Italian and English, the start buzzer has thankfullybeen discarded, there are a couple of start lists available to the people inthe stands, we no longer have to remain in the cage after check in (however itdoes provide quite a good view of the divers and a place for people to lie downshould they choose to) and the countdown is clearer and correct. In addition,they have started to spell my name right, however people are still a bit scaredof using Nevatt (rather than McPhee).

Yesterday I coached Chris through a rather tough 165mdynamic. He is starting to feel a bit tired from all his travelling and recentlack of pool training. But the dive was clean and he managed 20^thqualifier for the finals.

I also coached Romain through his dynamic. He did notbring his monofin and choose to go without fins. He did a nice 173m dive butreceived a red card for not wearing fins. We protested as there is no rulerequiring the use of fins for dynamic but the judges did not budge, despite theambiguity in the current rules and the fact that the benefit of the doubt mustgo to the athlete. In addition there is no advantage to not wear fins in thisevent. They felt it was not in keeping with the spirit of the rules and thecompetition. Chris tried to protest the decision a second time to no avail.Expect some changes to the wording of these rules in the near future.

I was proud of my students’ performances once again andam pleased to be competing with them in the finals.

Today I did a nice 165m dynamic dive. It was a very pleasantdive again and another nice introduction to the pool. My start was terrible, Ikind of got stuck somewhere on the edge of the platform pushing away from thewall, but I always take the first two or three kicks slowly anyway to sortmyself out and set the tone for the rest of the dive, so it was fine really. Mynew technique is finally becoming natural and feels so much more comfortable.My new kick has a much smaller amplitude but I’m still kicking about the samenumber of times as previously. I have yet to time it but believe the dive wasabout 3 minutes. I have recently slowed down to a more leisurely and comfortablepace, my dives take longer but they tend to be less kicks and the distancescovered are about the same, plus I am much more relaxed and sleepy throughout.The first length was 10 kicks, which I’m happy with, and I can’t remember afterthat. I only remember that one because I thought I’d suddenly better payattention and the T was already underneath me.

A common problem seems to be that people are becomingmore buoyant, myself included. When I arrived in France I kept sinking as I’mweighted for a very shallow pool and I tend to lose a little of my lungcapacity while travelling. Now I have to swim right at the bottom as I seem tobe very buoyant. I am able to do at least 5 more packs than usual, plus we areeating two four-course meals every day, which is likely to be the main problem.I was getting a bit too skinny before I left home anyway…

My poor old monofin is starting to delaminate after thetravel and years of abuse, so we have a date with SuperGlue tomorrow. It’salmost time to consider a replacement/upgrade. I’ll have to try to sell a fewmore Orca suits to try to pay for it though.

Fellow Kiwis Guy and William also made the Dynamicfinals, so thus far we have all qualified for all events entered. Guy did notparticipate in Dynamic without fins.

The girls’ dynamic performances are pretty high so thefinals should be quite exciting and we shouldn’t count anyone out. I believethere are probably between 3 and 6 men with their eyes on the world record.Possibly 3 guys are realistically capable and another 3 that might not be toofar off, so that should be pretty exciting too. Natalia is not here due toillness in the family so it will be interesting to see if any of her recordsare advanced on. Make sure you tune in to the live stream of the finals atwww.europeevolution cup.com or www.evolutiontv.com.

Tomorrow is a rest day and there is a trip to Veniceorganised. I’ll be completing the judge’s course and trying to avoid the great pleasureof strolling the streets of Venice. I still haven’t made it to the beach hereand it’s only 5 minutes away! Static heats will be Wednesday evening in the 25mpool. This pool is very hot – about 29 degrees in water but the air surroundingit is a bit like a sauna so it could be interesting. I only have my Orca suitwith me anyway, but I know others are intending to wear 5mm suits. Maybe we’llsee repeats of Timmo’s pants removal trick during static apnea. Hopefully theorganisers will open the windows and get some ventilation going through thespace. The depth is pretty nice at the shallow end (1.2m) but a bit too deepfor me at the deep end (about 1.5m) and the pool edge is again level with thesurface of the water, which should be nice.

First event – Dynamic without fins heats

2011-10-10T03:14:00.002+13:00

I was lucky to be able to dive on the second day of heats.I was still feeling the effects of the travel on day one, plus we had theopening ceremony, the event committee meeting and the competition briefingprior to any dives. It was a big day. Plus I like to get a feel for how thingsare going to be run before plunging in. The initial countdowns were prettyterrible, incorrect counting, unnecessary announcements during the countdown, theuse of a token start buzzer that sounds like microphone feedback and will helpto draw even the most focussed divers out of their zone and high speed countingafter official top (arrived at 10s in only 8s). By about the 4^thstart they seemed to have improved but the buzzer remains. All commentary is inItalian and so loud that all you can hear is an echoing noise as opposed to anyconcise words. Divers even need their coach to assist with relaying the countdownsas they can not hear the numbers poorly enunciated by an Italian speaker in apool of echoes.

Kiwi team: Chris Marshall, me, Guy Brew.

I coached Anna from the UK who had travelled from Dahab,been delayed 32 hrs at Cairo Airport during a strike and lost her luggagebefore arriving at 2am the night before. Needless to say she was ratherfatigued and stressed and was borrowing other people’s gear. She almost didquite well before blacking out momentarily on the surface after a few breaths atabout 92m.

I also coached Chris who did a nice controlled 130mgiving him a spot in the final.

German Barabara did a very nice controlled dive to 90 (ish) meters securing herself a place in the finals.

Day two, I coached Romain Doris, the Frenchman I’ve beentraining with in NZ. He has come a long way but still hasn’t taken on board allthe minor technical things that can cost you dearly in competition. His divewas a bit of a mess with a couple of penalties and he mucked up his surfaceprotocol when his new noseclip stuck to his face and did not come off before hesignalled, so was awarded a red card (disqualification) and needless to say wewere both very disappointed after how well he has been going in training. Hewill try again without fins in the dynamic with fins category, essentially toprove to himself that he can do the dive, and to gain some further experience.

My dive was one of the last at 7:40pm on day two. I knewI just needed to do about 100m to head through to the women’s finals. It was alovely dive, very relaxed and sleepy. I breezed past my nomination of 113m andcame up for an easy 128m placing me as second qualifier for the finals. It’salmost disappointing to not push a dive in competition but it’s all part of thestrategy

There are a lot of quite new divers here. It is great to havethem here participating and learning more about the sport, but at the same timeyou can see in the results that there are lots of technical errors that youreally should not see at a World Champs event. I re-iterate that I offer a remotecoaching programme which irons out a lot of these errors and perfects techniqueto help divers become stronger, gain confidence and get white cards!

Supporting divers is difficult. Lane A is adjacent to thestands and is fully visible but Lane B is on the other side of the pool. It isimpossible to watch the dives in Lane B apart from their entries and exitsunless you are the one coach allowed in the competition zone by the side of thepool. We don’t know who is diving as the start list is not posted in the standsand no one can understand the Italian who is commentating. Hopefully theselittle issues will be ironed out shortly.

AIDA Indoor Freediving World Champs 2011

2011-10-10T03:08:00.000+13:00

The competition organisation has been interesting to saythe least. They do not speak English and do not want to try. Communicationshave been in some strange and special language created by Google Translate. Theliability release form was such rubbish that it will never protect them. Thejudges were informed on arrival that the organisers where just arranging thevenue and do not want to know about announcements and results lists forexample. They decided to run two people at once to save costs on bringing morejudges. The finals will have 23 people in each, so pretty much everyone who didnot black out with get another chance to dive and the high end result arepretty disappointing as there is no real race to qualify and move on. But, thepool is lovely – it is clear, clean, deep and fast. Unfortunately we are usingthe 50m pool for dynamic without fins when there is a perfectly great 25m pooljust in the next room, but at the end of the day it is a competition and allathletes have the same conditions to work with. Competition is between 5pm and8pm daily. I find it pretty late. I prefer to get up, have breakfast and divethen rest for the remainder of the day. But they are feeding us well and lunchdoes not seem to be affecting me.

The accommodation is pretty simple but adequate and the food,while becoming repetitive is abundant and easy. We have four course meals twicedaily and I’m sure I’m gaining weight. My room looks out over the entry to thepool and it is about a 3 minute walk from my bed to the athlete check in at theother end of the pool complex.

Tomorrow I’ll be starting a judge course. I have resistedfor many years, but think it would be beneficial to NZ freediving for me toparticipate. Besides, I’m no longer required to organise so many events as wellas compete in them. It could reduce our entry fees somewhat by not having tofly another judge in from out of town or forcing one of the boys to not competedue to the fact that they are judging. I just have to remember to stop thestopwatch…

I am resisting the strong urge to visit Venice. It wouldbe a big day of about 4 hours travel, plus Venice is a walking city. I’m tryingto rest and conserve my energy for when it counts. I haven’t even made it tothe beach yet. It’s only a 5 minute walk. I will get there soon!

The official website is www.europevolutioncup.com and someresults and photos have been posted there. There will be a live stream of thefinals on this website and on www.evolutiontv.com. I believe we will also be aired on NBC.

Thanks again to my sponsors:

Firecrest systems, who are a Palmerston North and UKbased marketing and web design firm who paid my competition entry fee and arepreparing a website for me www.FirecrestSystems.com

Orca, who donate the odd wetsuit and allow me to selltheir gear www.orca.com Please contact meeither by email or leave a comment withyour email on this post if you’d like to purchase an Orca Free of Breathewetsuit (other gear available too).

Journey to the World Champs 2011

2011-10-10T03:05:00.003+13:00

I definitely appreciate the destination over the journey.The travel to Italy was gruelling despite no real delays or problems. My mum was travelling with me and we had agreat and exhausting stop over in New York. The first leg was about 27 hoursdoor to door. We stopped in LA for a couple of hours from around 2am NZ time.It doesn’t make for great sleeping. New York was fantastic. We saw all the mainsights, but three days was pretty light. We stayed in a cheap hotel just stepsaway from Times Square and went to a couple of Broadway shows, saw the Statueof Liberty, the new World Trade Centre, the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton at theAmerican Museum of Natural History, Central Park, Frank Lloyd Wright’sGuggenheim, the Met, Madame Tossaud’s, etc, etc.

From New York mum and I travelled to London where we tookseparate connection flights. Mum went to Rome to join an organised tour of Italyfor 10 days. I went to Toulon to do a little training and recover from the jetlag with my training buddy from Fielding who has recently returned home toFrance. Two flights, two buses, two trains, and about 24 hours later I arrived atmy destination. It was another tiresome journey with the stop over in themiddle of the night, rendering me practically unable to sleep. I was stayingwith Olivier, a member of the local freediving club who has a home in Le Pin deGalle, perched on the edge of a hill just a few steps from the beach. It waslovely and really tested my memory of French. Romain and I managed a fewtraining sessions, although some were aborted due to my general state ofwell-being (or lack of). I spent five days in Toulon and managed to catch up ona bit of rest and was starting to feel a little more normal by the time wedeparted. I suffered quite a lot in the heat, expecting it to be cooler at thistime of year and coming from a country where it’s the end of winter. I had topurchase a skirt and some shoes to avoid perishing in the sun.

Another 12 hours of travelling involving a car, twoflights and two buses and we arrived at our final destination of LignanoSabbiadoro in the North of Italy near Venice. This is the location for the AIDAIndoor Freediving World Championships 2011.

I don’t cope well with lost sleep but was lucky to feelpretty normal again after spending a couple of days in Lignano. It’s a shame tolose 2 weeks of training prior to such a big event, but I’m sure my body willremember just fine.

Ocean Hunter Deep Obsession 2011

2011-10-05T02:06:00.005+13:00

Once again I’ve been a bit slack with my blog sorry! Another competition came and went – the Auckland Freediving Club hosted the “Ocean Hunter Deep Obsession” – surprising name for a an indoor event. I think they’re going to host part two in December where people will dive to the depths of Lake Pupuke. Yes, the lake does resemble its name, nestled on the North Shore of New Zealand’s largest city and home to many a duck, swan and eel. It does clear up a bit below 15m but is pitch black, great place to practise diving with eyes closed. They tend to limit the depth to 50m to avoid anyone getting stuck in the mud and having to swim back with additional weight.

Anyway, the competition was pretty average for me. We drove up to Auckland the night before, arriving quite late after an eight hour drive. Thankfully Mike, my Masterton buddy sponsored the drive. Tania from Wanganui came too – she’s my Palmy buddy.

I chose not to do a static. Statics fatigue me a lot these days. Anything over about 6:30 takes me a while to recover from. Besides, I set a new NZ record at the last competition and impressed myself enough with that. Statics were also in the afternoon after dynamics so I didn’t really have a hope of achieving anything fantastic. The new guys discovered this too with the largest struggle lasting just over 3 minutes. It was actually very refreshing to just have the new competitors in having a go without being “shown up” by the big boys. We’re pretty top heavy in NZ, so it’s good to give someone else a chance to “win” for a change.

I was quite proud of my buddies. Tania did a massive personal best of 126m dynamic without fins. We have been working hard on her technique and it is starting to come together. She just needs to keep practising the kick! It was Mike’s first competition and it took much convincing to get him there. He did very well with a dynamic of 65m. He’d only ever done one static session before and struggled through a bit, but I’m pleased he didn’t let that stop him. It was also great to see Gavin. He showed up to watch but ended up getting in for a static. He can still pull out 3 minutes without having done any training for what might be years now.

I managed a 158m DNF and 184m DYN. They weren’t quite the results I was after but I was happy enough. It’s always difficult when you have to travel. I was really just treating it as yet another training prior to the world champs and an opportunity to catch up with my old training buddies who I haven’t seen much of in the past couple of years.

Here are the competitors trying to sit on the bottom in exhale in wetsuits. Not sure that Wade understood the brief... Sorry everyone from Guy and I for blocking you! Tania is to the right of me and Mike is the one in the Orca suit looking like he should perhaps be at a different type of water recepticle... Photo by Phil Clayton:

A big thanks to Ocean Hunter for their continued support of competitive freediving in NZ. It's great to have some prizes! :) Here we all are at the prize giving (photo by Phil Clayton):

Poor Knights Marine Reserve Trip

2011-10-04T16:54:00.000+13:00

In August, Mike Smith from Ocean Hunter took a group of us up to the Poor Knights Marine Reserve for some diving. We had already postposed the trip once due to poor weather (my experience of the Poor Knights is always poor weather) and decided this time it had to go ahead. I seem to have this effect on the Poor Knights. I have attempted four times to spend weekends there and this was just my second day of diving! With the world plotting against us, we arrived in Tutkaka towing the boat only to have to return straight back to Whangarei in search of petrol for the boat.

Mike, who had just returned from a couple of weeks of glorious, warm, abundant spear-fishing in Tahiti decided to just be Captain Mike, a bit afraid of the cold water, diving without a speargun and probably the most convincing excuse was the new tattoo that adorned his upper thigh, incomplete due to the timing of his departing flight from Tahiti. We did manage to catch a glimpse although he became a bit shy about sharing.

My beautiful new Elios suit, that fitted so well and kept me toasty warm over summer let me down a little after the loss of about 6 kg (that’s what training does to me, I guess 10% of your body weight is significant when it comes to wetsuits). I should have known better and worn a vest but it was lost in a box somewhere with all my other worldly possessions. It was frustrating to have to get out and warm up regularly.

The first day, the weather was calm and overcast. The water was flat and the fish life swirled around us in abundance. We followed a rare surprise of a turtle. He came up and look straight into Phil’s lens. Perhaps he saw the reflection and though he’d found a friend. He must have been lost. I’m sure the Poor Knights is not warm enough for turtles.

After lunch and watching some big lively snapper swimming around under the boat, trevally jumping out of the water around us and a King Fish sniffing around, we headed into an enormous cave. There was nothing but us in the water but the light and visibility were spectacular. Poor Mike sat on the boat wondering what was so special down there in the darkness. The water was about 15m deep but you could see the ripples in the sandy bottom from the surface. I did not take my camera from the boat and have yet to see what photos came out of the cave, I’m sure they were pretty spectacular.

As the bad weather started to roll in towards us we found a sheltered area with lots of funs things to play with. There was a little cave that sucked in water and spat out air and another cave to ride through on the waves. We found an eel and nudibranch and the general fish life was still plentiful. The rain started and the water clouded over, and we headed for the shore, a little rougher than we’d started with.
The Bach was great. The outdoor shower was refreshing and we spent the evening in front of the fire, tired after a fun day in the sea. We had a great feast with dessert as Mike had neglected to inform us it was his birthday the day before.
The second day was not great. The weather had completely changed and the sea was stormy. All visibility was lost and the water had turned to soup. The boys had a quick dive on the local coast and managed to shoot one poor tiny fish which provided us each with no more than a couple of bite-sized portions each for lunch, but saw practically nothing. That was the night the snow came and we were all lucky to make it back home in time for work.

Wellington Winter Champs 2011

2011-06-25T20:52:00.010+12:00

It's been a very long time since I competed. I really struggle for motivation in the meantime. Our last competition was eight months ago (if you don't count the depth comp that I very diligently sat out of and just participated as the safety diver).

Three months ago I moved from Wanaka to Palmerston North for work. Basically because there was none in Wanaka. Luckily I have a good group of reliable and enthusiastic buddies to train with and we have finally managed to arrange lane space to train in. Unfortunately we were struggling to get lane space initially so had to do a lot of static training in the play pool. This shows in my competition results. My statics in training have improved significantly. While I struggle to do anything close to a personal best in training after work I can tell when things are improving - the dives feel easier and I start to achieve greater performances. My dynamics are improving steadily but still have a way to go to get back to my previous results. I do feel they are on target, but definitely still require some work and dedication.

The annual Wellington Winter Champs 2011 are organised by the Lazy Seal Freediving Club. It was the first year I have not organised the event and it was a pleasure to sit back and see the boys have a go (which they managed very well). It was nice to be able to just concentrate on my own performances for a change.

My first event was Static apnea. I felt very relaxed and quite confident. I hadn't done anything truely magnificent in training, but my exhale training had increased by about 20s in the month prior and in training my comfortable max had increased by about a minute. It was one of the most comfortable dives I've ever done. The dive was no warm up (just relaxed on the side), no hyperventilation (no change in breathing patterns from normal), and no samba. I got my first contraction at about 4:15 without having to really hold them off. They did come quite regularly after this but they remained small and I managed to stay relaxed and in control. I aimed to not put my hands on the side until after 6 minutes as this normally makes me feel uncomfortable and I generally pull out quite soon after. I managed to not put my hands on the wall until around 7 minutes. I also asked my coach (Chris) to start the clock late as so many people pull out of there dives directly after a specific time call when they feel they've done enough. Anyway, he made me think I was about 10s behind where I actually was. I managed a new personal best and new national record of 7:34. The record places me second in the world after Russian Natalia Molchanova.

The whole dive was very relaxed and wonderful, a true testament to no warm up diving and my theory of retaining absolute relaxation prior to and through the first breath into the dive. As usual for anything longer than about 6:30 I felt very tired and wobbly for a while after. It seems to take me a long time to recover from these big statics.

Here is the video, sorry it's not very exciting viewing!

Unfortunately I felt a bit exhausted after the dive and it showed on my dynamics that followed. I managed 156m with the monofin (must start training with it again) and 144m no fins. I was hoping for a bit more in both, but I'll keep working on them and we'll see at the next competition.

A big congratulations to my Palmy dive buddy Romain Doris, who is pretty new on the competitive freediving scene. He managed 180m dynamic without fins, which places him 7th in the world and will give him the French national record (if AIDA France finally changes their dope testing policy for national records that makes national records unachievable for those who are not sponsored). Also to my other buddy Tania Wong, who is going to a be a really great freediver - we just need to give her a little more time. Tania managed a 104m Dynamic without fins.

Competition results

Taupo Depth Training Camp

2011-04-09T17:10:00.002+12:00

29 April - 1 May, Motutere, Lake Taupo I'm collaborating with Ocean Hunter to present a couple of full days of diving: 4x depth sessions and 2x theory sessions with a focus on helping you to freedive deeper. Note that this is NOT aimed at beginners, a certain level of knowledge and experience is required. Please make contact as below (Ocean Hunter, ph 09 377 0896) if you're keen to participate.

Website, coming soon

2011-03-05T10:10:00.000+13:00

www.deepsouthfreedivers.co.nz

Orca wetsuits

2011-03-05T10:05:00.002+13:00

I just wanted to let you know that there are plenty of the new Orca Breathe freediving wetsuits in stock here in New Zealand. Please make contact if you'd like me to arrange to send you one. The NZ$ is low post the Christchurch earthquake, so you could get a good deal.

Dive Camp 2011 - Wanaka, New Zealand

2011-03-05T09:25:00.005+13:00

Dive Camp all started a few years ago with the Lazy Seal Freediving Club. We thought it would be a great idea to have a dive holiday in summer, where all participants contributed by sharing their knowledge and experience and supported each others’ diving, as opposed to a course where one person must take control. Now I have moved from Wellington and the club, and set up Deep South Freedivers in Wanaka, in the “Deep South” of New Zealand’s South Island. I wanted to keep the tradition alive and invited diving friends from around New Zealand and the world to attend Dive Camp 2011, in the height of our summer, in one of New Zealand’s most scenic locations.

Unfortunately the offer was not taken up by the great numbers that I had originally envisioned and the proposed competition to follow a week of Dive Camp had to be cancelled, but we had a great group of four lively young (at heart) women participating. Barbara Jeschke, German Freediving Champion and Cristina Kuemmel, Danish champion joined local novice Jane Hawkey and me for two weeks of freediving training in both the lake and the pool, a bit of tourism and a lot of laughs.

the girls: Cristina, Kathryn, Barbara, Jane

Wanaka turned on the charm with the strong winds finally abating in mid-February, on the weekend the ladies arrived and leaving us with hot settled weather. The lakes were calm, quiet and warm, with no thermoclines felt at all and 16°C recorded at -30m. It was like we had all the lakes to ourselves, with very few boats or even people around. We dived in various locations around Lakes Wanaka and nearby Hawea, where there are steep drop-offs, giving us much more depth than we needed only a short swim from shore. One spot dropped immediately to 20m or more from the shore, giving us one of our darkest diving days as we dived in the shadow of the adjacent cliff and low morning cloud hung around the surrounding mountains, creating an eerie sensation both on the surface and at depth. Not to worry though, we never lost sight of the rope and generally we had pretty good visibility despite rain from the previous week clouding up the water.

Out diving in Lake Wanaka: Jane, Cristina, Kathryn

Barbara

The Wanaka Community Pool was, as always, very accommodating. It is a 25m, warm pool, a little shallower than ideal, but perfect for training.

Cristina practising her DNF

Stretches were done on the pool lawn looking out towards the mountains or on the beach before getting in. Barbara had plenty of funny analogies, such as the “naughty dog” neck stretch or the “lazy secretary” ankle rotations. Jane’s back yard set the scene for our dry apnea sessions, looking out over the idyllic wide, green Clutha River in the evening sunshine.

stretching at the beach: Cristina, Barbara, Jane

The Dive Camp concept worked well again, with even the most novice diver amongst us finding she had valuable knowledge to contribute. Each of the 15 scheduled training sessions had a theme that was mostly followed quite closely, giving us a starting point for discussion, debate and skill sharing then time to try what we had learned.

The participants were all inspirational in different ways. Barbara, aged 56 has done 18 iron man races (now given up for freediving) and looks much younger than her years. Cristina’s sense of adventure led her to jump off Queenstown Hill strapped to a strange man hanging from a paraglider, and trying sashimi and then getting addicted to it. Jane managed to juggle all the workshop sessions, a young family and work as well as preparing some great meals for us all.

As well as all the diving we managed to fit in a few little adventures. A trip to Queenstown included seeing old Cromwell, riding the gondola and the spectacular Shotover jet, and dinner at the old Cardrona Hotel on the return over the Crown range, New Zealand’s highest sealed road. We drift-dived the Clutha River, New Zealand’s largest river, from its source at Lake Wanaka for about an hour through to Albert Town, through some minor rapids and Dean’s Bank, scaring a multitude of trout as we passed. We walked up Mount Iron for a stunning 360° view over the area and went biking around the lake. We perused the sculpture exhibition at Rippon vinyard, one of the oldest vinyards in Central Otago. We took an overnight trip to Lake Tekapo with some disappointing salmon fishing in Lake Pukake on the way (we’re blaming the rain that day and low visibility in the lake!), a midnight visit to Mt John Observatory, where the night sky is a World Heritage Site and offers some of the world’s best star gazing (however up-side-down according to Barbara), had a dip in the hot pools over-looking the light blue coloured glacial Lake Tekapo and visited Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain. We joined Scuba Steve for a dive day in Lake Hawea with a picnic on the shore, and we dived at the head of Lake Wanaka followed by some hiking through virgin forest in the Mount Aspiring National Park with a visit to the Blue Pools.

At the summit of Mount Iron with Lake Wanaka in the background: Barbara, Kathryn, Cristina

Cristina at reflective Lake Hayes

Cristina about to jump off a mountain with a strange man

Rippon vinyard sculpture exhibition: Barbara & Cristina

One of the less pleasant New Zealand experiences for the Europeans was the discovery of sandflies and how much they enjoy biting foreigners. Not to worry though, they are not dangerous; they just leave small itchy bites. The ladies also experienced their first large earthquake first hand, but luckily far enough from the Christchurch epicentre to not be destructive or involved (other than emotionally) in the state of emergency that followed.

Dive Camp 2011, Wanaka was a great success with everyone learning from and supporting each other, enjoying the local environment, making new friends in the world-wide freediving family and just having a lot of fun in and out of the water.

Article - performing under pressure

2010-10-20T15:56:00.005+13:00

This article was in last week's Listener (New Zealand current affairs magazine). It's about the All Blacks cracking under pressure, but I found the second half of it quite interesting in relation to freediving.

I'm hoping that if you click on these images they will become bigger so you can read them. Otherwise you can try this link.

I think that as freedivers we should know our dives so well that in competition we can just switch off, do our best and enjoy the experience. I've always had a song for statics and I call on it if I'm struggling to just tune out.

Practicing under stress and positive thinking are also beneficial to freedivers.

Videos

2010-10-15T16:31:00.006+13:00

I found some videos of me from recent competitions:

Deep Obsession last weekend in Auckland:
Static, 6 minutes 31s

Dynamic without fins, 136m

Dynamic, 180m

Wellington Winter Champs about 2 months ago:
Dynamic, 151m

Dynamic without fins, 154m (the contentious one with the foot touch)

Summer training workshops and competition

2010-10-15T11:59:00.003+13:00

This is a preliminary invitation to all freedivers come and diving with Deep South Freedivers in February 2011, at the end of the New Zealand summer in a beautiful spot; Lake Wanaka. Please register your level of interest by responding to this email (or to the event on Facebook: search for "New Zealand freediving adventure") so I know what to prepare for!

The set up is to allow novice through to elite freedivers to participate (new divers would need to complete the courses over the first two days).

The training workshops will definitely go ahead and if there is enough interest I will also run a week long competition (see below).

The rough preliminary plan:

Sat 12 Feb: introduction to freediving course - dependant on numbers: min 2, max 6 people - NZ$200
Sun 13 Feb: intermediate freediving course - dependant on numbers: min 2, max 6 people - NZ$200

Mon 14 - Sun 20 Feb: Structured training workshops (lake, pool, theory - based around competitive freediving) and sightseeing trips around Wanaka which, as part of New Zealand's main adventure tourism region could include hiking, mountain biking, fly fishing, drift dive the Clutha river, dive Arethusa Pool (a lake on Mou Waho island on Lake Wanaka where there are 1000 year old totara trees preserved in the water), kayaking, visiting Queenstown, bungee jumping, jetboating, skydiving, trip to coast where you can collect paua in knee deep water (fairly untouched), etc

Mon 21 Feb: rest day and competition preparation.

Tues 22 - Sat 26 Feb: Competition covering all AIDA disciplines (lake and pool) - competition will be dependant on numbers interested. We can potentially make it a world record status competition but please express your interest now to make this happen.

Sat 26 Feb: party in evening

Sun 27 Feb: head home

Lake Wanaka is 311m deep with good easy access points from shore, and various deep bays that will allow us to find sheltered deep water if the wind is blowing. The water is clean and clear and the temperature should be in the mid to high teens (Celcius).

The weather is usually hot and settled in February.

Wanaka has a nice 25m pool, but we will probably go to Cromwell for competition in dynamic disciplines as their 25m pool is a bit deeper.

Wanaka has a lot of holiday homes, where we will book accommodation. If numbers are small, all accommodation and food will be included in a package. A rental car may be required too.

Roughly budget NZ$150/day all inclusive once you're here (it will hopefully be less) plus courses if required (includes for workshops, entry fees and eating in, but not tourist activities). I'm trying to keep prices down and am not doing this for profit!

Domestic flights into Wanaka on those dates are very cheap right now (NZ$157 each way from Auckland/Wellington) - expect these prices to double closer to the time.

Please send this invite around your freediving friends/clubs and respond as soon as possible. Hope you can make it!

Kathryn McPhee
DSFreedivers@gmail.com

Wanaka Freediver Homestay

2010-09-28T21:48:00.002+13:00

I just wanted to let you know that Deep South Freedivers is now offering a freedive homestay. Come and stay in stunning Wanaka, New Zealand, train with me daily (pool or lake - it's warming up now) and I'll coach you, receive full board (meals and basic accomodation) and have a bit of spare time to explore the region. Please comment with your email if you're interested (I won't post it) and I'll send you some more information. As of 1 October I no longer have work so have plenty of time that you could benefit well from.

Cressi World Record Challenge

2010-09-28T19:42:00.009+13:00

25-28 September 2010, Naenae & Porirua Pools, Wellington, New Zealand

We were coming up to Wellington anyway for Simon's mum's exhibition opening on Friday so we stuck around for the competition - worth a try.

The competition was organised for Dave Mullins to set world records in Dynamic and Dynamic without fins since his national records in both events exceeded the world records. I think he had a glimmer of hope for a static too but that faded once he put his head under. He was sucessful and made nice clean dives to 265m and 218m respectively, but unfortunately did not push out his dynamic without fins national record of 232m.

I didn't have high expectations which helped reduce some of the pressure on me (very nice). I don't really want to make excuses but my pool has been shut for the last three months (re-opened on Saturday funnily enough) and I've spent the last four months commuting to Queenstown from Wanaka daily, over NZ's highest sealed road, through snow and ice in my little two wheel drive car, mostly in the dark and working long days. This is a photo of the summit of the Crown Range (taken on the way to the airport departing Wellington) - it's meant to be spring time now.

Anyway, I've managaed to increase my training in the last month from one in water session per week to two, by staying over in Queenstown one night a week and driving to Cromwell on the weekend, plus a couple of rather fatigued dry sessions. I lose about 20% of my ability when fatigued so really had no idea of my capabilities prior to the competition and was hoping that everything would come together in time. Thankfully a few things did. Having a couple of days off work before competing and some good sleeps helped enormously. My dives have only just come back to feeling wonderful again after having such a big break, firstly from the pool (training in Egypt & the Bahamas), then holidaying and then settling back into "normal" life. Please remember that eventually all your training will pay off and long dives do feel fabulous!

Since the last competition I've managed to fit in one max dive with my monofin, simply because it's hard to focus on more than one event with such limited training time, but feel that my technique is really improving (feeling much better than ever before). I managed 177m in the competition, which I was pretty happy with. I do have high hopes for future months but I guess we'll have to wait and see - I'm hoping that with some proper training and a bit more technique work to make everything more natural that it will all start to come together soon. The comp dive was still a bit slow: 3:02, which is that time I'm aiming to make it to 200m in when the technique actually starts to work properly.

I did dynamic without fins on Monday after a day of rest, good sleep and a lot of eating. The dive felt great (remembering that they are just starting to feel really wonderful) but there were still some issues. I feel my buoyancy has changed again in the last week or so (or perhaps the Porirua pool water is a little different) and it affect my stroke count each length. I made it to the 161m and came up but had one of the world's tiniest black outs (I could remember seeing the marker on the bottom indicating when I'd arrived at the WR distance). Anyway, it meant disqualification so I had to try again today. Today I opted for the safe option and decided to get a white card rather than chase numbers (always my preference). I managed 156m without fins with a white card. I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't 5m further (the world record is 160m) but I feel that I would have suffered the exact same fate as yesterday had I pushed through. It did save me $1000, which is quite significant considering my employment contract ends 30 September and I'll be without work again. There are definitely still things to work on as I essentially haven't had the time this year to work through any of the finer details. The next thing is to figure out how to stay under longer than 3 minutes. My 156m was 3:06, which is about the right speed. Please feel free to comment and post ideas... :)

If you haven't already, please become a fan of AIDA NZ on facebook. You can view videos and get regular updates on what is going on here in NZ. I also have a facebook page where you can click on like and see updates on me as a freediver and Deep South Freedivers.

Wellington Winter Champs 2010

2010-09-03T10:35:00.001+12:00

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.

How to organise a freediving competition

2010-05-26T13:21:00.006+12:00

I've recently been asked to document this information, so here it is. I hope it's helpful to you. You can post a comment with your email address if you'd like me to send you a pdf version. Don't worry, I won't make your comment public! Please make comments - I'd like some feedback.

General notes:

Please note that this document has been set up only as a guideline to assist competition organisers. It is not intended as a finite document and organisers must be familiar with the current AIDA International rules, statutes, guidelines and forms to be found in the downloads/documents section on the AIDA website: www.aida-international.org Organisers should also consider local laws when organising events and investigate whether or not insurance is required. Any insurance cover must also protect officials and volunteers at the event. The organiser’s greatest priority should be to ensure the safety of all the participants, officials and volunteers at all times throughout the competition.

World record competitions require a little more organisation, further information on this can be found in the rules.

1 Decide on an organiser

I would recommend that you do not organise a Freediving competition as an individual. Organise it as a representative of an incorporated society (your club or AIDA National). In NZ this protects you and other volunteers, removing your personal liability. Stay alert and ensure that all required safety protocols are followed to avoid any claims of negligence.

Organising a competition is not difficult, there is just a process to follow. I have tried to outline the steps in this document to make it easier for you.

2 Decide on a date

Ask around your freediving buddies to find out when they are free.

Check that your competition is not overlapping with school holidays (they tend to make people busy and travel costs increase).

Check that there are no big sporting events (olypmics, world cups, etc), especially if you are expecting records to be broken, this means you are more likely to get media coverage.

Check the pool is available.

If using open water check there are no other events scheduled, eg ironman, triathlon, jet sprints, regatta.

I'd recommend starting this process at least two months before the competition so that everyone can get themselves organised and start training!

3 Read the rules

It's a good idea at this point to have a quick read through the rules to ensure you remember everything!
http://www.aida-international.org/aspportal1/scripts/aida%20regulations%20-%20v12.pdf

4 Book the pool

Consider your timetable and check the pool opening hours.

Remember that you need to allow around 15 mins to get set up at the pool. Allow 15 mins for an official's briefing and another 15 mins for the competitor's briefing. Competitiors need to check in 1 hour prior to their official top time (this should be after their briefing is finished) and need to have pool space for warm ups 45 mins prior to their top. This said, you are probably going to need to be at the pool one hour prior to warm ups so check the pool is open 1 hour before your booking. Also try to get people there early to avoid delays.

Consider how many divers you will have. I like to allow around 10-12 mins each for statics (obviously for some people we need to allow more time, eg if Guy Brew is getting in we'd probably allow at least 14 mins: start up to 30s late, 9 min breath hold, 30s for judges to assess, 1 min for congratulations and to clear the lane, 2 min countdown and a small contingency in case he smashes his record). I allow a minimum of 8 mins for each dynamic and again a little longer for the slow boys: 10-11 mins. Allowing a reasonable amount of time reduces delays through the event and gives everyone time to do their jobs without panicking.

Work out how many sessions you want. In NZ most people only like to dive once a day. If you are having 2 sessions than you might be able to make the second one a little shorter. Give divers plenty of recovery time between their dives to avoid accidents, have time to eat and allow people to perform at their best. I'd suggest a minimum of 5 hours.

Remember that you should give the judges a 10 min break every hour too.

If you have to book open water space, now is the time. Also think through your schedule. Remember it can take a minute or so for the officials to re-set the line to the correct depth after each diver.

5 Invite officials

Send around a official invitation to all the local judges, medics, helpers, etc. Outline the competition: dates, times, no of sessions, etc. Give them a date to respond by. Ask for a list of their credentials: judge level, experience, etc.

Remember that the organiser is obliged cover the costs of the officials. This includes transport, accommodation and meals.

6 Send info to AIDA National

In NZ, the AIDA NZ board does the final selection for judges for competitions. This is to ensure that all judges get to have a go at judging regularly and removes favouritism from organisers. It also ensures that there are no conflicts of interest. We attempt to have 3 judges for our competitions (rules require 2). We also generally announce men's and women's competitions separately so that we can use competing men to judge women, competing women to act as medic for the men, etc.

From the respondents of the invitation collate a list of those who would like to judge, with their credentials and send it through to the board. I would normally offer my recommendation too and any reasons why. Make sure that they get back to you quickly.

Remember that if you are expecting 50% or more international divers (eg non-Kiwis in NZ) the competition will be international as opposed to national and there is a different minimum level imposed on judges.

7 Inform officials of their selection

Confirm that the officials still want to judge, etc.

Check with their schedules and book their transport & accommodation.

Remember that if you are organising a depth event then the judges need to be available to measure the rope (in daylight) and you will probably need additional time for briefings the night before.

8 Announce the event

All competitions need to be announced to AIDA International.

Send an email to the AIDA International Sport Officer: calendar@aida-international.org

The following information should be included:
Name of competition
Competition type (eg national, world record status)
Date of competition
Place of competition
Names of judges and their levels
Organiser name and contact details
Events that will be held (eg STA, DYN, CWT)
Length of pool
Performance restrictions (eg depths limited to 90m)

The email needs to be received by the AIDA International Sport Officer at least 2 weeks prior to the event. In NZ we aim for 6 weeks.

9 Advertise the event

Let all the local club and AIDA national members know that the competition will be occurring. Send them an email or invite them on facebook. Add the event to your website. Don't forget your sponsors!

10 Ensure you have enough helpers

Check you have:
Judges
Medic and in water safety divers (remember your warm up lane/rope)
Videographer(s)
Boatsmen, time keepers, photographers, etc

Remember to cover their costs.

11 Prepare a budget

Consider your expenses:
Pool hire & entry fees
Boats (hire, fuel, etc)
Officials’ & helpers’ transport, accommodation and meal allowances
Oxygen bottle refill
AIDA International fees (2€/competition dive)
Purchase of any additional equipment (tape measure, rope, tape, tags, video cassettes, etc)
Phone calls
Insurance (if applicable)

I normally also factor in a bag of snacks for the officials (to keep them alert) and a lunch for everyone (competitors, officials and supporters) once the competition is over.

Consider how many divers you feel you can be guaranteed to participate and divide the costs, minus any sponsorship by the number of divers to find out your entry fee.

12 Prepare forms

The following should be prepared so everyone knows what to expect and to make it easy for you as the organiser on competition day:

Competition information:
Name of competition
Competition type (eg national, world record status)
Date of competition
Place of competition (include address and directions if necessary)
Any sponsors
Names of judges and their levels
Organiser name and contact details
Name of medic and their contact details
Events that will be held (eg STA, DYN, CWT) and when/where
Description of pool: length, depth, temperature, etc
Description of open water: visibility, temperature, currents, link to weather forecasts, etc
Performance restrictions (eg depths limited to 90m)
Description of any fun events outside the competition
Competition fees
Any AIDA National fees that might also be due
Link to competition rules
Schedule: Closing date for entries/payments
Times & locations for briefings/event committees (officials & competitors)
For each session: Closing times for announced performances, how & where
First check in time & where
Warm up times
First top time
Estimated finish time
Recretional events
Times & locations of social events, meetings, etc

Also include forms for participants to return:
Entry form: Name, contact details, sex, nationality
Emergency contact with relationship and contact details
Events they want to enter into
Costs involved (ie to be able to keep this form as a receipt)
Where to send forms & fees, & closing date
What to include: Medical statement & medical certificate
Liability release form
Copy of passport (if necessary)
Statement to allow club and AIDA National to utilise video/images from the event at their discretion.

Medical statement (from AIDA International website)
Liability release form

Also prepare a safety/evacuation plan. The plan will identify potential risks and how to deal with them at the specific locations involved.

13 Checklist

Write a check list for everyone and delegate tasks so everyone knows exactly what is expected of them. Follow everything up in the week prior to the competition. Re-read the competition rules to check you have not missed anything.
My checklist from a previous indoor competition looked like this:
Joy medic & media contact
alert local hospitals & pool staff: provide with safety plan
issue press releases
help set up pool during warm ups (measure, lane markers, etc) – optional
bring: t-shirt, stopwatch, tags, medical bag

Tracy head judge & jury
help set up pool during warm ups (measure, lane markers, etc)
bring: t-shirt, stopwatch, tags

John judge & jury
help set up pool during warm ups (measure, lane markers, etc)
bring: t-shirt, stopwatch, tags

Phil judge & jury (women only)
help set up pool during warm ups (measure, lane markers, etc)
bring: t-shirt, stopwatch, tag

Braedon judge & jury (men only)
help set up pool during warm ups (measure, lane markers, etc)
videographer – women, dynamic events only
bring: t-shirt, stopwatch, tags

Tammy in water safety
bring: wetsuits, fins, mask, snorkel

Sat STA
in water safety Tammy & coaches
videography Gavin

Sat DYN
in water safety Tammy
Videography Paul (men) & Braedon (women)

Sunday
in water safety Tammy
Videography ? (men) & Braedon (women)

Chris post comp draws & results on LSFC website comp page when they're ready

Jude shop for Sunday lunch & host it

Gavin bring: video camera incl cords & housing

Kathryn LSFC rep (organiser)
receive entry forms, liability releases, med certs, money
confirm pool bookings
Pick up and bring extra O2 bottle from Air Liquide, Seaview
Shopping officials’ snacks
receive nominations
compile comp draws & results
bring: O2 kit & first aid & masks
rope (starts)
lane markers & tape measure
sticky tape
rules (incl NZ)
protest forms
calculator
comp draw
competitors' forms
pens, paper & clipboard for judges
refreshments for officials
petrol vouchers for officials
briefing outlines (official time, lane set up, judges/jury, safety plan)
laptop and cords (protests)

14 Receive forms

Make sure you receive all the entry forms and payments well prior to the event so you do not have to chase anything up on the day. You might want to send a reminder email out a couple of days prior to entries closing. Chase up anything that is missing.

Let the AIDA National have a list of entrants to check they have paid their AIDA National fees.

Re-confirm your schedule and make sure you have enough pool time booked for the number of entries.

15 Receive nominations

If you are organising and competing you may need to receive nominations through a neutral party (eg a judge).

Once the closing time has passed set up the competition draw, post it on line and print copies to post at the competition site and give to judges to record results on.

The competition draw can be:
Lowest announcement first / deepest diver first
Lucky draw

The draw should include the following information filled in:
Date, name, nationality, sex, event, AP (announced performance)
There should be empty spaces for the following information to be filled in by the judges:
RP (realised performance), penalties, reason (eg black out, broke surface, late start), points, comments (eg national record, personal best).
Don’t forget your sponsors.

The draw, once filled out can then be used as the results list.

16 Competition

If you’ve done everything as noted above the competition should run pretty smoothly.

Ensure the lifeguards and the local emergency services know what you are doing and have a copy of your safety/evacuation plan, plus some understanding of the dangers of the sport.

Brief the officials, medic & helpers first to confirm they are happy with the way things will run, then brief the competitors. The briefings should at least include the following:

Thank your sponsors
Introducing the officials, organising and outlining their roles & ensuring that they have the appropriate equipment
Showing the competition draw
Where/when divers need to check in
Where/when boats will leave
Locations for warm up zones & competition zone and who is allowed to be where and when
Where photographers & supporters may and may not be
Where coaches may and may not be
Safety plan
Official time
Protest procedure
Outline of basic rules (optional)

17 End of competition

Tally up the points and have a prize giving if you have prizes.

Thank your sponsors.

Thank the officials/helpers and give them any thank you gifts, vouchers to cover costs, etc that you feel are appropriate.

Return original copies of medical certificates to the divers if you required them.

Post the results on your website/Facebook page/Deeper Blue.

Send out press releases if required.

Rest and recover!

18 Competition results

File the official competition footage somewhere safe and provide the AIDA National with a copy if they require it.

Send a copy of the results to the AIDA Nationals of all divers who broke national records.

Within two weeks of the competition ending you are required to do the following:

Send results list through to the AIDA International Sport Officer: calendar@aida-international.org

Ensure that if the judges changed from the initial competition announcement, that the correct judges are listed with the results, so that they have the competition credited to them.

Pay the AIDA international fee of 2€ per competition dive.

Facebook

2010-05-26T13:13:00.003+12:00

While I've been home for a few months now and haven't yet found a job, I feel like I've been working full-time! The latest initiative is new pages on Facebook:

I have set up a Kathryn McPhee fan page.

You can also become a member of the group "Deep South Freedivers" to keep up to date with what I'm planning here in NZ. Check out the discussion area as I've put up a few things that might be worth you adding your 2 cents.

While you're at it, why don't you join the Lazy Seal Freediving Club group?

Deep South Freedivers, Wanaka, New Zealand

2010-04-25T16:09:00.005+12:00

Learn to snorkel or take your snorkelling to a new level with Deep South Freedivers, an exciting new Wanaka based organisation fronted by world record freediver Kathryn McPhee. Kathryn offers one-off courses and regular training and coaching for novice divers in Wanaka and the Queenstown Lakes district, as well as a professional on-line remote coaching service for competitive freedivers from around the world. She also offers an exciting drift dive experience down the Clutha River.

Deep South Freedivers will also soon be offering sales of Orca wetsuits (www.orca.com for more info), streamlined lead weights and freediver's nose clips.

Please contact Kathryn directly if you would like further information about any of these services: Diving Kat Fish @ gmail.com (without the spaces!)

About freediving:

Freediving is often referred to as extreme snorkelling, however is really just the breath-hold part of snorkelling. It is a sport that is accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, as minimal equipment is required; you just need water and a little willpower.

Learning to freedive opens up the underwater world to you for spearfishing, hunting & gathering, photography, and general scenic discovery. It is the best way to view coral reefs on your Pacific island holidays and is excellent for low impact general fitness.

Freediving is also a competitive sport. Competitive freedivers test the limits of their abilities in events based on time and distance in the pool and depth in open water. The world’s best are diving to depths greater than 120m and have static breath holds up to 11 minutes. Competitive freediving is as much a psychological game as it is physical. It is demanding and relaxing, frightening and peaceful. In 2008 New Zealand had four freedivers with world number one rankings!

Freediving can be dangerous. Always ensure adequate training and safety. We recommend participating in a course to test your limits, learn of the dangers, how to stay safe and how to assist your buddy if required. Never dive alone and ensure that your buddy is trained to assist you should you need help.

About Wanaka:

Wanaka is one of the most spectacular locations in an already incredibly beautiful country. The town of Wanaka sits on the edge of Lake Wanaka in Central Otago, a southern region of New Zealand’s South Island. It is surrounded by stunning mountains providing scenic hiking and mountain biking tracks as well as world class ski-fields in winter. The lake is easily accessible providing extremely deep and clear water to dive in.

About Kathryn McPhee:

Kathryn has been freediving since 2004. She has gradually worked her way up from absolute beginner to one of the world’s best. She has held a multitude of New Zealand and Oceanic records in all six competition events. In 2008 and 2009 she set four unofficial and one official world record in the distance based pool event of Dynamic without fins, swimming underwater breaststroke 159m on a single breath. She was published in the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records. At the 2009 indoor world championships in Denmark she won medals in all three events. Kathryn was voted “World’s best female freediver of 2008” in the ICARE awards. She has a breath hold of just over 7 minutes and has dived to a depth of 65m.

Kathryn ran the very successful Lazy Seal Freediving Club in Wellington from 2005 to 2009. There she taught most of the new members to dive and helped with coaching of the more serious divers. She has offered her remote coaching service since 2008 and has had successes with all students achieving personal bests and one even winning gold at the world championships in Denmark.

Kathryn is excited about bringing the sport of freediving to Wanaka and encourages you to make contact if you are interested in learning more about the sport, regardless of your background or ability.

Blanket

2010-04-03T16:53:00.002+13:00

A little while ago, while still staying at my parent’s place in Palmerston North, a brownie and her leader knocked at the door selling girl guide biscuits. It brought back a few memories and I really felt a great urge to invite them in to chat, but managed to overcome it and let them go on their way after just a quick snuggle with Minnow (my dog). Anyway, I was left feeling a little inspired.

You see, I spent over 10 years as an active member of the girl guides. I started as a brownie, then went to guides, rangers and finally I was a pippin leader. I tried to complete just about every badge on offer including Cheif commissioner’s and Queen’s guide awards, took part in a Gang Show, attended scores of camps plus ran my own and generally had a good time doing things I would not have had the opportunity for otherwise. It all fell apart when I started studying architecture as there really just was no time left over beyond work and study to put anything valuable back, but I did try with a couple of Pippin groups in Wellington for a while. When I moved to Wanaka I was unpacking boxes and found my campfire blanket. I have still picked up the odd patch from my travels and had three new ones from my latest trip ready to sew on. My blanket is a bit of a story of my life. I started it about 20 years ago when mum bought me a bare grey blanket for Christmas. I sewed on all my brownie interest badges in a brownie ring, which was really unbelievable foresight on my part as a 10 year old. This ring later formed a space for all my guiding badges. Mum helped a bit with sewing on some of the swimming ribbons I’d won using the sewing machine for the first two rows. The rest were entirely stitched by me, by hand about 15 years ago. I quickly ran out of space for the swimming ribbons and had to double up the rows. There are badges swapped with people I’ve met from around the world and some that I’ve picked up on holidays in strange and wonderful places. There are even ribbons from the concert band champs from when I played the clarinet at high school.

Now the biscuits have all been devoured but I’m still inspired to add to the blanket. I feel that the now large part of my life as a competitive freediver is under represented in the blanket. I’m currently looking to set up my own small freediving school here in Wanaka and I’m hoping to have some very personal badges made up and am keen to stitch one on very soon.

If anyone feels they would like to be represented on my blanket, or has a patch that might be relevant, please feel free to post it to me - I’d greatly appreciate it!

South American adventures

2010-04-03T16:16:00.008+13:00

Sorry, there haven’t been a lot of updates lately. I had a little disaster with a laptop in Peru that left me lacking the ability for non-essential communication for some time. The crisis has now been averted and I’m back into the blogging business! Fortunately we avoided the major crises hitting that part of the world. The floods causing severe damage in the area around Machu Picchu in January hit just two days after we visited. I believe the train has just re-opened. We were both in a Cusco hospital with Salmonella at the time, having felt a little dodgy periodically for the previous couple of weeks. Simon had giardia too. Some things I’m really just not jealous of. Other things I’m strangely thankful for. Not to worry though, the hospital was much better than our accommodation. There was a heater and someone comes running to assist every time you push a buzzer. Whereas the hostal buzzer went all night and just woke us up! They even brought us a laptop with internet and we had cable TV and comfortable beds with adjustable backs. The hostal had a tiny double bed that squealed every time I rolled over.

We also narrowly escaped disaster a second time departing Chile just a few days prior to their recent major earthquake. Thankfully our great hosts the Bennett family were OK in their flexible wooden beach house well above the height of the tidal wave.

We visited some wonderful places during our 10 weeks in South America. We started in a little place called Canoa on the coast of Ecuador, with a big wide beach, right before the Christmas rush. It was interesting to experience such a quiet town become so chaotic as the local tourists arrived in droves.

We spent a week at the Galapagos Islands, which was a major highlight. We were on a GAP tour which meant we had a small boat (14 tourists) and there was the option to go snorkelling daily. Our guide was amazing. He was so passionate about his job and excited about seeing the wildlife every day. Every Island was so different with respect to geography and wildlife. You have to be careful where you walk in case you trip on an iguana or stand on a lava lizard and the sea lions were great fun to play with in the water. They like to imitate you blowing bubbles, doing flips and corkscrews and generally racing around. They all had very different personalities and played with you in different ways with varying levels of intensity. I’d highly recommend visiting the Galapagos if you ever make it to South America – it’s worth the money whether you get in the water or not!

The Ecuadorian jungle was another little adventure. We stayed on the edge of a local community and experienced a little of their way of life. They took us on walks and boat rides through the jungle showing us different plants and insects and explaining what they are used for. We ate some termites (tasted woody funnily enough) which are meant to ward off insect bites (we still got bitten). We also tried some lemon flavoured ants which were actually quite tasty, but a bit odd feeling if they crawled on your tongue. Some big ants tried to attack me, but I managed to fight them off before they made it to the opening in my clothes between my pants and my t-shirt where they could access my skin and begin to eat me. It was a bit odd that there were no animals. They’ve all been eaten. Seriously. We did visit a wildlife refuge where we finally saw some of the animals and birds that once inhabited the jungle but are now few and far between. Most of these ones had been rescued from being kept as unmanageable pets or they had been injured in the wild.

We first experienced altitude in Ecuador. I’d never been very high before so didn’t really know what to expect. Every time I climbed a few stairs I’d puff unnaturally thanks to the thin air. I really had to take things easier than I’m used to while travelling. The highest we got was about 4800m above sea level. That was enough.

The real altitude started in Peru. We flew into Cusco. We opted out of walking the Inca trail as we’d heard so much about how it is just a big tourist trail, and we have beautiful walks at home that don’t cost anything. We did however take the train to Machu Picchu to experience the lost city. It was pretty impressive but I probably should have gone there before Petra. The rain even cleared up long enough for us to have an enjoyable morning on the mountain. For a moment the cloud cleared offering us spectacular views over the city. Inca ruins just aren’t as magnificent as other ruins around the world. It’s probably due to the fact that there’s no decoration. I’m not sure if they didn’t decorate or if everything was plundered or destroyed by the Spanish evangelists. They certainly stole anything gold despite the cultural value being much higher than the value of the very thin metal.

We spent some time at Lake Titicaca on both the Peruvian and Bolivian sides. The lake is the world’s highest navigable lake at 3810m above sea level. We saw (the tourist version of) the floating islands, which are pretty intersting. People live on man-made reed islands in the lake. The culture is pre-inca as they were left alone by the Incas and the Spanish who didn’t have boats or think to look for people living on the lake. They have gardens, fish farms, guinea pigs etc on the islands.

Bolivia was another level of culture shock. It is the second poorest country in South America. They resent the Chileans for taking their coastline in a war in the late 1800s and there are murals everywhere to remind them of the fact!

They have an interesting and diverse culture and landscape, and again it is mostly pretty high altitude. The highlight of Bolivia was visiting the Uyuni Salt Flats. We took a three day 4WD tour through the “white desert”. It was the rainy season and there was no wind so the salt had a film over water over it that clearly reflected the cloud formations – absolutely stunning. They also took us past colourful lakes full of flamingos, active thermal areas with geysers and hot pools, llamas made of salt, strangely shaped boulders, local villages, warm hotels fabricated from salt bricks and small bright green oasis’s in the midst of yellow desert. It was huge, diverse, strange and beautiful. The 4WD vehicles on the other hand were made for very small people with short to no legs and big soft cushioning bottoms. There were no toilet facilities (and if there were you were probably better not to use them) and the roads are incredibly rough (that’s normal in Bolivia unless there’s a mine nearby).

Civilisation felt sweet when we arrived in Buenos Aires. It was a welcome relief to be back at sea level essentially, plus we were finally able to cook for ourselves and pigged out on fresh steak and veges from the market every night. Buenos Aires is a very pretty city with a lot of Spanish colonial architecture. It felt so modern after where we’d been.

Chile too felt more like home (apart from the fact that no-body speaks English and their Spanish is different from everyone else’s so even the Spanish can’t understand them). Simon Bennett took us in and we went to his beach house in Quintay with his family for a few days. Simon and I went for a couple of dives straight out from his house (what a luxury). The water and scenery was much like being back in Wellington. Even the fish looked much the same. Simon’s son Marin (9) was our tour guide on the trip to Quintay. He is very mature for his age and fluently bilingual. He took us to the bus station, bought tickets, guided us around Val Paraiso, a cute seaside city, and guided us to the beach house in a collective taxi.

It was a bit sad to be finishing my big seven month adventure, but I was pretty tired and definitely in need of a week or so of rest prior to doing anything more. A holiday from the holiday was in order. Now I’m home and really am still holidaying. I’m actively seeking employment but still finding time to do interesting things. We walked the Tongariro Crossing with mum and caught up with different friends in the North Island before heading south to Wanaka to try to set up home there.

World Champs, Bahamas

2009-11-30T06:18:00.004+13:00

After three and a half months of travelling I arrived back in the Bahamas for the third time. Everything here is so familiar now: the tiny airplanes, the blue hole (the dark, weedy, full of current version), the narrow winding, pop-hole ridden roads, the left hand steer cars (they drive on the left, doesn't make for great visibility), the friendly people, the fact that I have to ask myself over and over if the locals are actually speaking English (yeah man, dey are, but it aint pwerfic), the need to disregard how much everything costs (or you'll have a nervous breakdown), the menu at Rowdy boys (the waitress remembered my name – can I just ask for the usual?), not having to lock anything, endless white sand beaches, turquoise water, slow internet, extreme boredom (not so bad this time because I've come from Dahab and am used to filling in time with very little). We managed to luck into a house on the hill in Turtle Cove. It's big and has a stunning view out to the sea. It doesn't have windows in the living area, just bug mesh so it's cool and breezy, and occasionally it rains inside, but even that is a bit refreshing after Dahab. The great thing is that I can see the sea from my bed. When I wake up in the morning I don't even have to sit up to be able to glance out and see what we expect of the day ahead. There are three rooms so I'm sharing with Chris (NZ) and Junko (Japan).

view

Fortunately Dean's blue hole was just going through it's morning high tide phase while we were training and conditions have improved immensely for the competition. I arrived a little over two weeks ahead of the world champs to ensure some time to adjust to the hole and recover from jet lag. My training was going pretty well. Initially I felt some fatigue during dives, which was to be expected, but I was still going fairly deep without squeezing or packing. I had a few issues getting my head around using my monofin, but managed to get back to my personal best after a couple of attempts. I was diving happily and not squeezing.

Kiwi team

Dean's Blue hole set up for the World Champs

Three days before the world champs I did a deep monofin dive and it went well. I did not squeeze, black out or suffer from much lactic. I did feel a bit of pressure on my chest and trachea, but it all seemed fine and nothing out of the ordinary. The next day I did what I thought was a conservative no fins dive that was meant to be a confidence dive. I had a small squeeze and a bit of a shake on the surface. The next day I rested and nominated a little less (51m) for the no fins heats the following day, thinking that was an easy dive and that a day of rest would make everything fine, since I'm always much stronger in my dives after a rest day. Then I got the sore throat. I tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away. I slept particularly well. On the morning of my dive it was very sore. I did a little negative warm up dive that hurt a lot, but must have loosened thing up a bit as a second one was much better so I decided to go for it and just try to keep my chin well tucked in. I managed to suffer a fairly sizable lung squeeze and then a small black out on the surface. The rest of the dive was fine apart from the fact that the safety were really deep and I started trying to glide up to the surface a bit early. It was still only about 2:05 dive time. I was pretty disappointed. The sore throat got worse and now I have no voice, plus I feel the mucous is starting to form. I'm hoping it stays in the throat and does not spread to the sinuses or chest. I managed to not get sick in Egypt so it's pretty annoying to have problems here. It's quite reminiscent of the cold I had in Arhus earlier this year, however in the pool I do not need to equalise so can get away with a bit more. I'll see what tomorrow brings as it will affect my constant weight announcement for the following day. I really hoped that I would not get squeezed here and was planning nice clean conservative dives, but once it starts it just seems to get worse and it doesn't seem to matter how much I pull back, I really need a week off to repair. I don't even feel like I did anything stupid to deserve it this time...

Update from following day:

after three days of sore throat I lost my voice and it's turned into intense amounts of mucous. I'm not sure if I'll even be getting in the water tomorrow.

Lung Squeeze clarified

2009-11-30T06:16:00.001+13:00

Lung squeeze is a shy topic among freedivers. There is very little information available either in books or on the internet and little scientific research seems to have been undertaken, as if it is a rare and uncommon problem. However, when asking around it seems most freedivers have suffered from it at some point in their diving careers, coughing up varying amounts of blood. Some continue diving and seem to get over it. For others it never goes away and they eventually retire from deep freediving with great frustration. Not coming from a scientific background, I struggled to find good explanations describing what happens and why and still am failing miserably to solve the problem despite giving myself time to try many different things that have worked for other people. I am also slowly learning from my mistakes. Here is some information that will hopefully help others to avoid what I have been experiencing.

You do not have to be a particularly deep diver to experience lung squeeze. I have heard of divers experiencing squeezes after dives as shallow as 4m (in a swimming pool), especially if they are diving on FRC, negatives or passive inhales. You do not actually have to cough up blood to be suffering from a lung squeeze. You may just be able to feel a little bit of fluid in your lungs after a dive and take a while to recover while breathing heavily. If you continue to dive after this then you will most likely make it worse and end up coughing up blood, requiring a longer time to recover.

There are two things that can happen. The first is that as you reach residual volume (the volume of air remaining in your lungs once you have fully exhaled) the negative pressure in the lungs will cause the lung walls to stick together and cause damage as they peel apart (essentially grazing the inside of your lungs) and the blood vessels can swell up and burst, causing bleeding inside the lungs (pulmonary edema). This creates a cough reaction to remove the fluid (blood) from the lungs. The likelihood of this happening is increased by diving deeper than your residual volume, the occurrence of contractions at depth or the use of the valsalva method of equalisation (pushing air directly from your lungs to equalise your ears), all of which create a huge negative pressure within the lungs and tension on the chest. Once a squeeze has occurred there will be scarring on the lung tissue and the chance of it happening again is greatly increased over the next few days and possibly weeks.

Other factors that could contribute to a squeeze are fatigue, discomfort and fear, tension or lack of flexibility through the chest/ribcage, or lack of elasticity in the lungs, which seems to be the case with a lot of pool divers who have stretched out their lung with a lot of packing. Over hydration can be a factor in blood spitting as there is already more fluid around the lungs which may not be retracted into the body after blood shift, however dehydration can make equalisation more difficult and cause the diver to tense up the chest area. Jet lag can make “easy” dives very uncomfortable and tiring. Careful adaption dives are fine while the body is jet-lagged however deeper dives should be delayed until the body has recovered. A general rule is that jet lag, whether you consciously feel it or not, lasts about one day for every hour difference.

There may be more blood if the squeeze occurs near a capillary where there is more blood available, so the quanity of blood is not a good indication of the severity of the squeeze. There may be a lot of pain or no pain at all depending on where the squeeze occurs, as there are no nerve endings in the lungs.

Trachea squeeze should also be noted. Sometimes divers come up with a sore throat and spit a little blood, usually just a small amount and only once. This is often after looking down at down at depth and creating a negative pressure in the incompressible and delicate trachea, which can also result in burst capillaries. It is possible to increase the flexibility of the trachea to avoid this.

The second issue is the potential for over pressurisation of the lungs (pulmonary barotrauma) on the ascent once bloodshift has occurred, which would suggest that full packing for deep diving is problematic. A freediver who packs on the surface will use a little air in equalisation and metabolism during the dive, however the overall quantity of air in the lungs does not decrease a great deal for the ascent. If there is blood remaining in the lung capillaries from the blood shift then there is again the potential for the already swollen blood vessels in the lungs to rupture near the surface and the diver experiences overpressure. Barotrauma is normally identified by foamy blood.

Lung squeeze can be serious. If your lungs are full of fluid, the alveoli are not able to pick up the oxygen from your lungs to transport it through your body to where it is needed for metabolism. Your oxygen saturation levels are low and can remain that way for a long time. In an extreme case this can cause secondary drowning. If it occurs at sea you may not be physically capable of swimming back to shore or the boat. You may not have the energy to remove your wetsuit or walk to the car. Fatigue and wheezing from serious squeezes have been reported to last up to a month in extreme cases.

Remember to always dive “one up, one down” with your buddy and ensure that they understand the potential dangers of squeeze. I often black out when I suffer a lung squeeze, even if the dive is much shallower than what I am usually capable of. My body is unable to absorb the remaining oxygen in my lungs to complete the dive and it is slow to recover when I begin breathing on the surface.

To try to avoid lung squeeze you should consider the following:

Avoid stretching out at depth with arms or neck. This includes looking downwards, taking large strokes/pulls at depth and swimming or freefalling with arms stretched above your head.
Try warming up if this reduces your contractions at depth
Work on your ribcage flexibility and stretch this area before diving deep
Turn before you experience contractions at depth
Progress slowly each time you start diving to depth
Avoid deep dives after travelling, especially if you have changed time zone or feel tired. Allow time to recover from jet lag prior to competing.
Only dive as deep as you are comfortable with to avoid panic at depth
Learn to relax at depth and release any tension from around the chest area prior to going to great depths. This can include tension from equalisation and learning to just keep the eustation tubes open during mouthfill equalisation may help or finding a very relaxed and streamlined body position that suits you.
Learn the frenzel/mouthfill technique of equalisation
If you are warming up and can feel the previous squeeze, do not continue with your deep dive
If you have a history of squeezes, in competition nominate depths much less than the sucessful (no squeeze) dives you have completed in training and do not try for a personal best in the 3-4 days before
If you have a history of squeezes, rest the day after a deep dive (even if you do not squeeze) as the potential for squeezing the second day seems to increase even if the second dive is much shallower.
Maintain regular depth training sessions, even in the off season
Start exhaling just before the surface (however this should be practised in a controlled environment)

If lung squeeze occurs you should:

Stop diving and exit the water
Stop any physical activity. Ask your buddy to tow you to shore and carry your equipment
Breathe pure medical oxygen, if available
Seek medical advice promptly, preferably from a designated dive doctor. They will quite likely give you some antibiotics to ensure you do not get a lung infection or pneumonia
Drink plenty of fluids
Take iron and vitamin C to help repair and reduce risk of colds
Rest at least for several days before diving or putting any pressure on the lungs

travels cont...

2009-11-30T06:11:00.002+13:00

After my final lung squeeze in Dahab (a fairly decent one), I decided to spend my last week not doing any deep diving and instead finally do what I'd planned to the whole time but had been rather distracted from and spend some time relaxing and playing with fish. I managed to persuade buddies to come with me to some of the local dive spots to finally get a feel for the place outside the big hole.

I discovered the timid little eels at eel garden. It was a bit of a cheap thrill. You have to practise very quiet duck dives to get down there before they notice you and become shy, retreating back under the sand. While out of the sand they just look like grass really, so not particularly stimulating. However the dive spot was quite pretty with lots of fish and colourful coral.

Wendy came with me to the Caves which boasted some interesting lighting effects for photography and had a couple of moments of pretty coral. The caves actually went back in under the beach which was quite odd. There was a curious barracuda and some Russian mermaids.

Lighthouse (aka Light Howse) was full of incompetent scuba divers doing intro dives with dive masters swimming above them holding their tanks. It's actually quite scary to watch them as they have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

Wendy and I also dived the canyon. I'm absolutely scared of doing swim throughs. It really doesn't matter what depth they are. Fortunately we had a brilliant day. The sun was shining, although that's really a given for Egypt, there was no wind whatsoever and the sea was so flat it was reflective. We struggled to find the canyon after poorly selecting and following some random scuba divers who strangely enough obviously did not intend to dive the canyon despite diving at the site. The surround area is fairly dead an uninspiring so I don't know what they were thinking. Eventually we found the big split in the rock below us. It was 18m under and we could see it perfectly from the surface. The part of the canyon that we managed to have the nerve to swim through is about 25m deep and roughly 10m long. Being me, I completely screwed it up. I swam very close to the bottom worrying about hitting my head so was 28m under. I'm used to dynamics so started swimming along and hit the end. Now instead of then swimming up I looked up and couldn't see the hole to get out, thought I hadn't gone far enough (but had actually gone a little too far) and that I just couldn't see clearly (my eyes are useless and it was a little dark), so I turned around and went back the way I came. Luckily Wendy recorded the evidence on video so my stupidity can be retained for all eternity. I then had to do it again properly and almost did the same thing again, but I'm pleased to say I did manage to do it sucessfully eventually! There was some nice coral nearer the shore where we were a bit out of the way from where the destructive scuba divers would swim to. Wendy and I agreed that coral and goldfish get a bit boring though.

I'm proud to say I made it out of Egypt without really getting sick. OK, I did have 8 hours of fever and headache, but it made me stay in bed (note bedroom, not bathroom) for my rest day, so it wasn't all that bad. Patti managed to accidentally drink some fresh nile water and not get sick, which was just as well since she was on a feluca, which tend to not have toilets.

My last week in Dahab was a bit up in the air. I didn't know when I was leaving as my flight from Cairo to Madrid was cancelled and I'd been moved to the next day, which was just one of the worst things in my world at the time as it would leave me with only one day in the western world prior to entering back into another backward sandy place. Plus there is too much fantastic art in Madrid to get around it all in a single day. Fortunately my travel agent managed to get me out of Egypt earlier rather than later and I was saved with three days in wonderful Madrid. I'm still unsure if Madrid was so wonderful due to the contrast with Dahab or because it's actually a fabulous place. I arrived at about 4am and got ripped off by a taxi driver who I didn't have the willpower to fight with and I didn't think my 2 Spanish lessons (one done in the airport in Cairo late at night) would help me much for this argument. Once the hostel owner had figured out who I was and actually let me in and I'd climbed the three flights of stairs with my 40kg of gear I went to sleep and managed to sleep right through the changing of the guard at the royal palace, which is special because it only occurs on the first Wednesday of each month, while I happened to be there, sleeping obliviously through the whole thing.

I had great plans for my extra day in Madrid including some me time and pampering (I'm in desperate need of some work on my hair and unfortunately still am). Anyway, I ended up spending three days walking all over Madrid, truly exhausting myself with no time to stop at all. Madrid is a beautiful city with a lot of interesting history. I did a couple of walking tours of the city (the centre isn't all that big, similar size to Wellington). I visited the palace which has a very awesome armoury. I got my Picasso fix for the year at the Museo Reina Sofia. I saw so many of the masterpieces I studied in art history at uni at the Prado. I visited the Caixa Centre, a hovering brick building by reknowned architects Herzog & de Meuron. I went to the compulsory tourist flamenco dance show. Plus I visited a few other galleries that seemed significant. As I was on my own I took up a challenge I found at the tourist information centre to take snapshot photos of a list of random monuments around Madrid. Being me I took it to heart and did both of the tours on offer and saw a few more things than I would have otherwise and ended up walking all over Madrid and exhausting myself a little more. They gave me a couple of free gawdy t-shirts in the wrong sizes for my efforts (more stuff to carry). I wish I'd had a few more days there, but definitely intend to head back to Spain at some stage in the future.

After just about killing myself carrying my gear back down the stairs, up the road to the subway, through the very narrow entry onto a train, up and down some stairs, onto another train, then yet another walk and another train I made it to the airport, which is new and very flash and thankfully, where there are trolleys. It was designed by Foster and Partners (the airport, not the trolley) which unfortunately has nothing to do with the firm I work for (Foster Architects – Ang and me vs Sir Norman with his hundreds of staff in offices around the world). After surviving the first of many interrogations (because I was flying to the USA and EVERYONE now wants to bomb them because Americans are just so annoying) I was hoping there would be some shops where I could buy some nice Spanish couture with my remaining 20 euro, but I was departing from a satelite terminal which was much less exciting and only gave me boring chocolate and alcohol options. Neither of which are particularly condusive to freediving training, yet everyone knows that freedivers consume vast quantities of preferably dark chocolate while no one is watching – full of anti-oxidants – we ignore the fat. Most freedivers could do with a bit of fattening up anyway, then they'd stop complaining about how cold it is when the water is “only” 26 degrees. We're lucky to have air warmer than that in New Zealand.

After my three days in Madrid I was already suffering water withdrawals and despite immense fatigue I managed a swim, spa and bath in my flash airport hotel in Miami before passing out.

Dahab photos
Madrid photos

Dahab

2009-10-29T02:20:00.002+13:00

Things I love about Dahab:

the blue hole
the water (Red Sea)
the fish
the men love me (blue eyes)
the heat
the sunset
the stars
NZ$0.75 ice creams (think Trumpet)
camel-jambs (I actually saw a real traffic-jamb involving only cars the other day)

Things I hate about Dahab:

the smell (think open sewers)
the water (brown & bacteria ridden)
the inconsistent & unpredictable bodily functions
the rubbish (everywhere)
the dust
the dirty feet
the incompetent snorkellers (how to destroy an ancient coral reef with several easy steps: walk on it)
the men love me (for all the wrong reasons)
the heat
90% of local men
“buy one”
“taxi?” (if they haven't run you down getting to you first)
compulsory prayers (mosques with loudspeakers), especially the 4am version
“Dahab time” juxtaposed with big city impatience (maybe this should be teamed up with the “90% of local men” and their general arogance)
the smokers (again maybe this should be teamed up with the “90% of local men” and their general arogance)

Freediving in Egypt

2009-10-10T01:18:00.001+13:00

Training in Dahab has been a bit average to date. I've had a lot of issues with equipment but have managed to replace, find or repair everything, so it's not the end of the world. I've been slowly working through my panic at depth issues and finally it all seems to be coming together. I've had further problems with small squeezes, not necessarily coughing blood, but just feeling like there is a little fluid in my lungs. I think I might have always had this but wasn't aware of it as I am now. I'm very flexible through my chest but it's the panic that makes me tense up. I've started setting my dive alarm at a “safe” depth so if I'm having trouble relaxing that's about when I should turn back, but I still get a decent dive in, if I'm relaxed I continue onward. It's improving gradually and I've had some very nice relaxed constant no fins dives between 45 and 50m and down around 60 with my monofin. The large contractions are now subsiding too which is a relief. Once I've done a few more comfortable ones then I'll start to work on increasing the depth slowly. The Blue Hole is wonderful to dive in. It's a short swim out and so sheltered. I can look at the wall on the way down to distract myself. The dives are becoming more natural and I don't have to focus quite as hard to keep everything together.

I spent 10 days in Sharm el Shiekh diving with the Russians and Bill and living in total luxury in a hotel where I had a whole huge room to myself (first time since I stayed with Elisabeth in Aarhus in early August) and they had buffet meals three times a day so I could just relax and do nothing. I actually got bored when I finished my book.

I messed around with doing warm ups for a week but they really didn't work for me. I didn't get enough time between the dives to reach the total relaxation state I like to achieve before my dives and as I struggle psychologically it is easier to just keep the focus and relaxation of a single dive rather than four. There was a competition at the end and it was a pleasure to witness Natalia doing her very clean new world records in constant weight and free immersion. It was also nice to get to know her a bit better. She is a very shy, creative and intelligent woman who writes her freediving blog in the form of poetry (only in Russian unfortunately), setting some of her poems to music and video to share the beauty of freediving with a wider audience. I think she has struggled with the depths too, though you wouldn't believe it now. I didn't really feel ready for the competition, but managed to do a couple of very relaxed and enjoyable constant weight dives to 52m and 61m (dive time 2:02). It wasn't a personal best, but I had plenty of air left and it was one of the nicest feeling deep dives I've done, which is an achievement in itself as that was one of my main goals for my time in Egypt.

Photos from Egypt 1

Photos from Egypt 2

Middle Eastern adventures

2009-10-10T01:10:00.003+13:00

Patti and I have just been on a bit of an adventure to Petra in Jordan and through Israel. We left home (Dahab) on Tuesday morning with a great plan in our heads as to how the next 6 days would go. We took a local bus to the Israeli boarder. The security guards ohhed and ahhed as I was 3 days overdue on my visa, then they just stamped it. We walked through to Israel. Everything was going fine until they discovered Patti's Iranian visa and had to do a security check on her. They asked her all sorts of really random questions and then we just had to wait. The woman said it would be between 1 and 8 hours! We only had to wait about 1 hour and 45 mins, so it wasn't too bad. Patti was a bit stressed out by it and had a beer. Everyone else at the boarder seemed to get through ok. We taxied through Israel and made it to the Jordanian boarder just before it was due to close at 6pm. So much for spending the afternoon at Petra. I think we over-estimated the public transport in the Middle East. The sun was already setting. Two hours later our taxi driver dropped us off in Petra and couldn't understand why we didn't want to tip him despite smoking in the car after we asked him not to and charging us extra just because we were late at the boarder and had no other options.

Our hostel (Valentine Inn) also stank of old cigarettes as everyone there smokes inside. They made us a great dinner though and provided us with breakfast and packed lunches for Petra. Noisy Muslim prayers and boxy pillows awoke us before sunrise. We had an early start, taking the hostel's first free bus to Petra at 7am after breakfast to avoid tourist buses. Petra was amazing. I would have been happy if it was only the walk in! The first 1.2km is through a huge seismic gap in the mountain. The rock face is multicoloured and was lit by the morning sun creeping down through the gap high above us. Every now and then a horse and carriage would charge past us giving their elderly passengers a very bumpy thrill ride. The narrow path ended ubruptly opening up to the Treasury in front of us. The treasury is famous thanks to it's appearance in Indiana Jones, which they like to play every night at the hostel. The buildings in Petra have been carved from the rock face. There were originally freestanding buildings as well, but there's only really one left plus a few foundations.

We walked up the many steps to the High Place, a sacrifice area. It took us about an hour to reach the summit for a spectacular view down over the entire site. It must have been a pretty large city 2000 years ago when it was flourishing. We took some time out and had tea with one of the locals who has a stall there under a tree, selling handicrafts. Hannah was our age and had worked there half her life. She had a son to her cousin at the age of 14. She is the only divorced Bedouin that I've met so far. She spoke about 5 languages pretty well just from spending time with tourists. We took the steps back down the other side past some pretty areas where there was almost vegetation. I imagine that 2000 years ago Petra would not have been in the middle of the desert. There were lots of systems in place to deal with stormwater but I don't think it rains there any more. Once we made it back down we went straight back up another mountain of similar height to see the monastery. We climbed even further up to see a view, but it was out the other side, not over Petra itself.

In a state of incredible fatigue we accepted tea with a couple of Bedouin guys on the way back down the mountain. They were very keen to invite us for an authentic Bedouin chicken BBQ dinner in Petra, under the stars that evening. We headed back down and along the colonnaded street and back through the gorge out to catch our bus back tot he hostel arriving back very tired after our 11.5 hour adventure. Luckily they fed us so we didn't have to think for a while.

We managed to go out again in the evening to the Turkish baths, which involved a steam room, some lying around, some exfoliation and a soapy massage. I felt so clean and relaxed after.

Our taxi left for the boarder at 5:30am. It was a 3 hour trip along the length of the Dead sea. We had re-organised our trip so we could have the whole day in Petra and were attempting to make it across the boarder in good time to catch a bus up to Heifa to meet a fellow Kiwi and explore the Galilee region. Unfortunately you have to take a bus between the Jordan and Israel boarder, which they made us wait ages for. Then the Israelis seemed to have forgotten that they had just security checked Patti and we had to wait another couple of hours while they did it again because it was a different boarder (they didn't really like it when we reminded them it was the same country). We finally emerged in Israel about 2pm, and they are an hour behind Jordan We gave up on the Heifa idea and headed over to the Dead Sea in a taxi with the intent of staying over night. The rooms were
expensive and once you've floated for an hour or so it gets boring so we changed plans again and decided to head to Jerusalem in the evening. A guy working in the hotel offered us a lift to the adjacent town and suggested we look at a room he has available with a pool, spa, steam room, ensuite, air-con and massage. It all sounded very dodgy when we discoved it was at his house, but we agreed to look at least. After seeing the small sleep out and the very nice pool we decided we were too tired to make our way to Jerusalem and took a chance. It turned out that we chatted to his family a bit and learned more about Jewish culture, which was pretty interesting. We went across the road to the mall for dinner. They have metal detectors and bag checks at all the entrances. We had a spa and the slightly dodgy massage but turned down the offer of heading to town to drink, and slept very well instead.

The bus to Jerusalem was pretty quick, but going through town to get to the Old City was crazy. It was just a few hours before the Shabbat (Sabbath) started and the Jews were out en force. I never really imagined it – there are two types and in one sect the men wear a kind of uniform of wide brimmed black hat, long black coat and pants and a white shirt, plus the ringlets by their ears if they are un-wed. It was a strange experience. We found our baackpackers in the middle of the old city. The city is small and there are no cars inside. There are four quarters: Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Armenian. The Muslim was probably the most exciting with lots of little shops underground, and lots of hustle and bustle. We tried to explore the Jewish Quarter before everything closed for Shabbat, but failed. We wandered around and saw the city from a vantage point on a roof above the Arab markets. Then we went to see the parade of the Franciscan monks along the Via Dolorosa which is believed to be the path that Jesus took to carry his cross up the hill. They stop at the 9(?) stations of the cross to pray in three languages and sing between them. They now make so much more sense. At the fourth station, where Jesus stopped and met his mother we got bored and visited the church that's been built there and had tea with some local guys who working in a cafe there. Italian tourists popped in carrying their own hired wooden crosses, but they looked much to light and small – not enough of a burden, plus there was no crown of thorns and I don't think they had to be nailed to it at the end so some of the effect was lost.

We visited the Western Wall of the Temple Mount (wailing wall). It was just before sunset so we witnessed all the Jews coming in to pray at the start of Shabbat. It was pretty interesting and weird, especially when the Muslims started broadcasting their prayers on the loudspeaker from the Dome of the Rock above. The men and women are seperated by a diving wall. People write their prayers on paper and stuff them into the cracks in the wall as then they are more likely to be answered. The Temple Mount is an interesting place. It used to be a massive and very important Jewish temple. The remaining walls are the original temple perimeter retaining walls. The Turks (Islamic) destroyed it at some stage when they took over the city. They built the Dome of the Rock mosque there. When the Crusaders (Christian) took over the city they used the mosque as a cathedral. Now it is a Mosque again. It is believed that this is the location where both Jesus and Mohammed rose to heaven. The Jews want to remove the mosque and rebuild their temple and will continue to wear their black suits and hats or mourning until this occurs. The Palestinians only really have control over this piece of land in all of Israel. The Jordanians guard it as they provided the gold for the dome. We could not access it at all as it's closed to the public on Fridays and Saturdays, we were out of town on Sunday when evidently there was a violent protest so they decided to close it to the public for the rest of the week, during the Jewish celebration of Sukker.

On the way back to the hostel we stumbled upon the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which was still open. I don't think I've ever visited a historic church at night. It was so eiree. This church houses Jesus' tomb (not sure if there is a body inside or not, I thought the story or the resurrection would require there to be no body). Anyway, the church was amazing. It had obviously been altered a lot over the years and unlike European cathedrals which have big facades, it was pretty well surrounded closely by the neighbouring buildings, so you could not walk around it's external walls. There was a central chapel with lots of little chapels around it. There was a little chapel underground that was essentially a cave. Also some cave like areas that seemed to be tombs. It was pretty spooky. There were tourists singing and a huge queue to kiss the tomb of Jesus. Someone told us that it used to be a Roman prison. Not sure how true that is.

We were invited to a party with some locals and thought we'd go along for a bit. They ended up having to work about 2 hours later than expected by which time we felt old and tired and decided to just chat with them for a bit then head back to the backpackers. They did feed us really well at their restaurant though.

We really planned it poorly arriving on Friday as everything seemed to be closed on Fridays and Saturdays. Our plan was to head back to Eilat in the south on Saturday afternoon, but that didn't work either as the buses don't run on Shabbat and need to be pre-paid for the few in the evening. We instead booked a bus trip to the north for Sunday and extended out stay in the country until Monday and we found it so interesting.

Saturday morning we dropped back into the church and saw it from the roof. It was much better at night though. We visited the Tower of David museum which outlined the history of Jerusalem, conveniently disregarding anything that happened from about 1950 onwards. It made things a lot clearer and really helped us understand why it is such a special place to so many people of different backgrounds. After lunch we walked along top of the city's ramparts (wall) from Jaffa gate to Lion gate (about 2km). It was really hot but it gave us a good view over the city. We then went outside the walls to the tomb of the virgin Mary, the garden of Gethsemane where some of the olive trees dating back to the time of Jesus still stand. Perhaps one of these trees is the one he sat under to contemplate his crucifiction. We visited the Gethsemane Bascilica of Agony then climbed up the Mount of Olives behind the Jewish cemetery to get a good view over Jerusalem as the sun set.

We took a bus tour to Nazareth and Galilee on Sunday. It was pretty average. We stopped where all the other tourist buses stopped. The tour stopped at the Basilica of the Annunciation that had a cave where it is thought the angel Gabriel visited the virgin Mary. The church was quite modern and I actually quite liked it. There were some old excavations underneath from previous churches on the site including 4th century Byzantine mosaics. In Cana we visited the church of the first miracle where it is believed Jesus turned water into wine. Then the church of Tabgha on the shore of the Sea of Galilee was closed so we visited the one next door instead. This is the rough location where it is thought that Jesus fed 5000 people with 2 loaves of bread and 5 fish. It was kind of cute. All churched out we went to another in Capernaum that was modern and built over the site that is believed to have been the home of Peter. It is believed that Jesus taught in a synagogue in Capernaum and remains of a synagogue have been found there from that time. I think they forgot to take us to the other church on the Mount of Beatitudes. We convinced the driver to not take us to the flash hotel for an expensive lunch so we got a shawerma and then went to the free beach at the Sea of Galilee for a swim. It was really dirty but refreshing. Patti tried to walk on water (like it's believed Jesus did there) but failed miserably when she fell off the rock. When Patti got out we discovered a medium sized dead animal floating amongst the rocks. Not really sure what it was. It kind of matches a description of a groundhog. Then we were taken to a baptism site on the River Jordan which is in a location believed to be close to where Jesus was baptised by John. It was pretty but highly touristic. Lots of cattle run type fences to push the tourists through who wanted to be baptised there. Tourists were filling up their water bottles with “holy water” from the river. There were lots of catfish and a big duck that tried to eat one of the Japanese. We made it back to Jerusalem early (probably because the driver forgot one of the destinations) and despite being pretty exhausted had a great falafel and headed into the New City to explore a little. There were lots of Jews out celebrating Sukker.

On Monday we got up early to be at the gate of the Temple Mount when it opened at 7:30am but they turned us away. We tried a few times in different places just to check, but to no avail. So we packed up our stuff and headed to Tel Aviv to try to get me another 30 day Egyptian visa. Unfortunately the embassy was closed until Thursday so we just wasted more time and money and had to change our plans again. We jumped on a bus to Eilat (4.5 hours through the desert) but their embassy was shut aswell and would be closed the next day too. We decided to chance the boarder and managed to buy me a visa for an extra US$50, so I did that. Didn't really have a choice in the matter. We made it back to Dahab under the light of the full moon at about 8pm. It was a good trip when we didn't have to deal with the inefficient bureaucracy.

Photos can be found on Facebook

Triple Depth

2009-09-07T05:36:00.002+12:00

Dahab, Egypt

4-7 September 2009

Day one of competition was the static competition. We had to change pools from the scheduled one as it had been used to wash camels which had been relieving themselves in it and was no longer considered sanitary. It suited me as it was closer to my apartment so I didn't have to walk so far in the hot hot sun!

I struggled to get my suit on in the heat and it was great to get into the water. I felt like pulling out the whole way but thought I'd better at least do my announced performance of 5:11. It was a painful dive with first contraction at about 3:10. There was no contrast on the bottom of the pool so I needed to put something down there as I couldn't see if my eyes were fuzzy or not. I guess we live and learn. I aborted at 5:25, which was enough to be the first woman and save some energy for the three days of deep diving. There werre some scientists doing tests on us and the pulse oxymeter was reading 98% again about 1 minute after I completed my dive.

Too many people wimped out of the static even only wanting to participate in depth, and didn't even come and support us in true freediver fashion, so it was a bit of a sad small crowd. A few were sick, so we'll let them off.

I have joined a team with Jana and Alexey. After much brainstorming we came up with a team name that we're very proud of: Sexy flexy mula bandha.

Yesterday was Free Immersion. I announced 58m to set a new national record. The 50m dive I'd done in training a few days before had been really comfortable, and I figured if I was going to announce around the mid 50s anyway I may as well try a little more and set a new record. The dive was relaxed and easy for me. I actually quite enjoyed it! I felt the pressure change a little beyond 50m but could still equalise OK. The hole is beautiful to dive in. The edge is close and you can watch it on the way down. There is light all the way and the temperature is comfortable even without a wetsuit. I haven't seen the arch yet, I think I was facing the wrong way.

I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself today. It started last night. There was a beautiful full moon shining in the cloudless desert sky over Dahab. I had a really sore stomach from allowing myself to get really hungry due to our late competition meeting, then eating too much too fast. On the way home I was offered a 25 Egyptian pound, one hour, in home massage by the dodgey dairy owner. Patti was a little upset because he offered the same to her a few minutes later for 50 pounds. Then while walking between the dairy and home a car came towards me down the road and blinded me with it's headlights for a moment and I kicked a big rock really hard (there are random rocks on the road everywhere). My left big toe nail cracked about a third of the way down the nail and bled a bit. I washed the dirt off it with nice brown bacteria filled tap water and then put iodine on it and tried to ignore it. It actually wasn't too bad while I was diving in my monofin today – it just put pressure on the top of the broken nail which is still attached. I'd also visualised it not annoying me, so blocked it from my mind. I later caught it on the hem of my pants while dressing, which ripped it open again. Later still, during my shower I narrowly escaped further excruciating pain when the shower rose decided to fall from it's wall bracket to the precise point on the floor that my damaged toe had been located just a split second earlier.

Before my dive I couldn't get my nose clip to close properly and I ended up leaving the surface at the last possible moment and blowing bubbles all the way down, then was starting to have equalisation issues (though essentially everything was still working when I turned). I couldn't relax so pulled out at 56m to avoid damaging myself. It was also only my third time doing any depth work with my monofin – we haven't really adjusted sufficiently as yet. I think my team mates are a bit upset with my yellow card, but they have been pushing me to go deeper than I feel comfortable with at this stage. The new national record yesterday was nice though and pretty easy but I felt some fluid in my lungs after it, however didn't spit any blood. I wonder if I have felt this regularly before and just didn't recognise what was happening. My O2 saturation after was a little lower than normal about half an hour later which would indicate a minor lung squeeze. I definitely need more time to adapt to the depth. I put in my nomination today before the team mates could talk me into going deeper. I'll do a 46m no fins dive tomorrow, which I feel mentally and physically comfortable with despite having only done a couple of no fins duck dives (deepest to 28m) since I arrived. When I completed my dive today I realised that my new D4 dive computer that I just won at the world champs is already stuffed. It thought I was still diving 30 minutes later and that it was 55 degrees celcius. It was hot but not that hot! I was wondering about it the other day when it said that it was 27 degrees on the surface and 19 at 50m. I'm fairly certain I would have noticed an 8 degree temperature change while diving wearing only my togs. Hopefully the other one is not faulty too.

On a better note, I feel very relaxed about this competition. I don't feel any pressure to perform or nervousness about the dives. It feels so trivial after the world champs. It's really just a part of my training as I haven't really done enough depth training to justify competing anyway. I have been sleeping particularly well since the bedroom fan arrived (had a couple of hellishly hot nights with very little sleep thanks to one lazy landlord). Until today I've actually felt very comfortable in all my dives and haven't suffered from the usual level of panic state at depth. The water is warm and I think I've finally fallen into relaxed holiday mode.

Dahab, Egypt - first impressions

2009-08-31T01:32:00.002+12:00

29 August 2009

I arrived safe and sound in Dahab. My driver was actually at the airport with my name on a card as promised. I have a room to myself for a couple of nights until Jana arrives, then Patti will take over her spot from the 3rd. I thought that there would be lots of other divers in the same hotel but it wasn't until evening when I was feeling a bit desperate and introduced myself to my new neighbours that someone actually arrived, and they were so jet-lagged from their trip that they went straight to bed.

When I arrived I managed to find the waterfront (just by the hotel). The guy at freedive Dahab suggested somewhere to eat, but I wish I hadn't asked. The food was great but it was near an entry to the water and there were all these little bedouin girls around – like rats or pigeons, grabbing at and stealing bits of my lunch. I ended up just moving it over and giving it to them and it was gone in seconds with quite a frenzy. They really didn't look hungry, it seemed like more of a ritual. They then cleaned up the mess on the table with utmost care.

I then went for a bit of a walk but wasn't in the mood for being accosted by all the guys so had a lie down for bit. I emerged just before dark and had a quick dive in the moonlight at “Lighthouse”. It was nice to get in the water, and it's so warm and clear. I might need a torch though if I'm going to dive at that time of day! I was feeling relaxed again and ready for the next ordeal of finding somewhere to eat. It ended up taking me an hour and 45 mins before I sat down in a restaurant. I had Egyptian tea with a Muhammed (very popular name here) and then had to chat with too many guys and get out of eating at their restaurants. I was looking for a place that Muhammed had recommended and must have missed it but found the Funny Mummy that seemed to ring a bell, then I found other freedivers!!! Yay, friends!

Cairo, day two.

2009-08-31T01:26:00.002+12:00

28 August

I walked down to the Egyptian museum today - it's not far. I spent 5 hours there. It's an old style museum, wooden cabinets and tiny typed text. They definitely need an upgrade - they could employ me!!! There wasn't even a cafe (surprising because they all want to take your money and there were thousands of people). There was some pretty amazing stuff and I had a great relisation as to how much damage water causes - of course there is no water here and everything is pretty pristine for being 3-5 thousand years old.

I only got accosted by a about 4 men. One started touching me but he left me alone when I told him not to. I was taken into a shop for Egyptian tea by one (I believe this is fairly normal and was only a little nervous). The tea is quite nice. I really upset his cousin when I wouldn't buy his papyrus pictures (can't actually carry them). Shopping here consists of walking down the street, being chatted to by guys and invited into their shop where they ask you which one you like best and then pretty much force you to buy stuff. I have been ignoring them but it's not in my nature. This place makes me a bit nervous.

The hostel did my laundry - I'm not sure what they used but everything (minus one of my favouite tops which is missing) came back hard and my black undies are grey. They almost took the print off one of my new t-shirts!

My bum is bruised from the camel ride yesterday and my thighs are pretty sore. It didn't feel so bad when I was on it. :(

CRAZY Cairo - first impressions

2009-08-31T01:24:00.002+12:00

27 August 2009

I landed in Egypt at about midnight last night. I opened the aeroplane blind about 25 minutes before landing and we were already flying over a city - Cairo is huge. My driver for my free transfer was not at the airport and I got stung for a taxi to the central city. It's OK though because it still cost less than the 3 min taxi ride in Denmark! There were traffic jams and the roads were chaotic. This is evidently normal in a city of 20 million people. The driver had no idea where he was going. He stopped and asked for directions six times and made 4 phone calls, plus a couple of social calls. There seem to be no traffic lights. At the big intersections there are traffic police with whistles telling people when to go, otherwise turning is essentially merging. I made it to the hostel by about 1.45am. My room was clean, and there were only a few foam chips on the bed sheets. I booked a tour for day one so had to be up just before 8. I slept pretty well with my ear plugs in to drown out the honking horns and voices from the street below. At 4am I was awoken with a start as the adjacent mosque was broadcasting the Ramadan prayers to the whole city. It was incredibly loud but kind of musical and eiree in my little room. I might video it tonight.

The air here is thick and kind of sweet. Smog, smoke (not too bad as it's ramadan, but they smoke some kind of fruity stuff), fumes, dust, sand and the like. I felt dirty before I even made it to the hostel.

The pungent odour of flea powder greets me every time I step into my room, but I guess that is better than the alternative. I have only seen one cockroach and the sheets appear to be clean. I have already started to remove black build up from my nostrils.

Breakfast was included and pretty poor. I have to find some fruit to accompany the white bread and jam. My tour guide was very pleasant and saved me from the hoardes. We went to Saqqera pyramid - the first pyramid first. It took and hour by car. The edges of the nile are green and everything else is just covered in golden sand or dust from the Sahara mixed with soot. There are donkeys pulling carts and oxen walking down the streets (I think this is kind of a suburban thing). A lot of the buildings have people inhabiting them and reinforcing bars sticking out of the top as though they might consider adding floors one day. We went to see how papyrus paper is made and they did the hard sell on me for some Egyptian art. I managed to get out alive and without parting with any money or making my pack any heavier. We then did the same with essencial oils. The highlights were perhaps the welcoming drinks, I tried Egyptian tea and cold hibiscus. Both nice and sweet.

The pyramids of Giza and Sphinx were next. I got stung again and took a camel safari in the Sahara for about 2.5 hours. It was just me and the guide and the kid walking in front holding the camel reign. I enjoyed it. It was so peaceful and there was a light breeze blowing that stopped me from sweating profusely. The pyramids themselves are really quite boring. They are the same on all sides (funnily enough) and the sense of scale seems reduced by the sparseness of the surrounding desert even when you're standing right next to them. But they do create a pretty landscape. I only got harrassed by three Egyptian men trying to sell me stuff. I think my chaperones saved me to an extent, however they are just as bad wanting lots of tips despite having already been paid. My thighs and back are now pretty sore from straddling the camel and bouncing around.

I'm just plucking up the courage to venture into town to find some dinner. I might wait until sunset as I think more food places will open then as those fasting for Ramadan will be allow to eat.

Tomorrow I'm going down to the Egyptian Museum, on my own. It's about a 5 minute walk away. I spent a lot more than I had planned today (mainly on the camel safari) so will make up for it tomorrow.

Copenhagen, Denmark

2009-08-31T01:09:00.001+12:00

23-26 August (just 2 days really)

The WCs after party kept me up most of the night. Maria unfortunately managed to sneak out without saying goodbye or showing us her black eye, and possibly without actually sleeping at all. I managed to score a free ride down to Copenhagen with Maria Livjberg, Morten and Nanna. We were a tad packed in but I actually found it quite comfortable almost lying in the car with my feet up over the top of my big backpack. I managed to fall asleep and miss most of the exciting scenery on the journey: the big bridges, etc.

Nanna, sister of my first fabulous host Sofus (I love the Kreutzmann family!) offered me a bed which I accepted with great enthusiasm. The three nights in Copenhagen were set to cost me more than my two months stay in Egypt, and I'd found a cheap place! Nanna has a pretty cool apartment in a nice area. The only downside being the lack of a bathroom (the only plumbing is a wc and a kitchen sink), but we used that of a friend living in the same building.

We managed to entirely lose the morning of my first day in Copenhagen due to some late sleeping and grocery shopping. But, we made up for it in the afternoon. We first took a guided boat tour of the canals taking in most of the city's major buildings and the celebrated Little Mermaid sculpture from the water. We then wandered through the old town centre and visited the cathedral and town hall. There was an exhibition in the town hall that included a lot of (rather poor) elephant paintings. There seems to be an elephant obsession in Copenhagen. They are everywhere. I started to give up hope of ever seeing the elusive reindeer or moose during my Scacndinavian adventure, elephants became much more rational.

We took in the park and the dodgey part of town that included an up-side-down burnt out car, that just seemed to fit in with the landscape so well. We had a drink near Nanna's office at a funky little cafe that reminded me a bit of Wellington's midnight expresso. Then we strolled through the assistant cemetery and found some wacky graves and a few famous people including Hans Christian Andersen and Neils Bohr. We finally made it home, exhausted.

On the second day Kerian and Darryl were going to pop into town on their way through and meet us for breakfast. They arrived really quite early so they came to the apartment for breakfast instead. We all then went to explore Christiania, the hippy part of town that looks pretty well untouched since the 70s. It's strange to wander off the very Copenhagen-esque streets straight into a park-like area where people live in the nature by the water, there's heaps of graffiti art and odd sculptures plus little alternative shops where people openly sell canabis. In some spots you could see the rather contradictory golden spire of the adjacent cathedral juxaposing against this hippy commune.

We said goodbye to Kerian and Darryl and then visited the architectural centre where there was an exhibition on Foster+Partners and their handling of existing buildings in their architecture, including the Copenhagen Zoo elephant house. Upstairs there was an installation by the landscape architects SLM called elephant that outlined some of their thinking behind the design of the new elephant house.

We managed to sit down for a sammie on the water's edge before heading into the Black Diamond – the national library. The building is quite stunning over all but there are areas where the detailing isn't so fantastic. There was an exhibition called A building is not a building by a photographer with stunning enormous images of details from buildings, some of which were recognisable, others not. We popped into the Danish design centre but they were just setting up the next major exhibition so we went and hooned around the National Art Gallery for an hour before it closed – I don't think either of us were really in the right mood for it so while we saw most of it we only really looked at a few pieces.

We then went on a mission to find me a “Danish” from Denmark on the way home. I got some pretty yummy cakes, eventually – we had to take the metro back out to Christiania, slight detour.

It was a bit of a whirlwind tour but I think I saw the major attractions Copenhagen has to offer. And, I made it to the airport without yet destroying my back.

The end of the World Champs

2009-08-24T01:17:00.002+12:00

Well, the individual indoor world champs is all over for another two years. The Kiwis have taken out one third of the available medals.

Guy Brew managed gold in both static and dynamic after Bjarte Nygard pushed too far and blacked out at about 240m.

Suzy became the second woman in the world to reach 200m and took a silver medal for the dynamic.

I was one of three people who competed in all heats and finals and earned a bronze in both dynamic events and silver in static.

For me exhaustion had set in by my third event in the first 24 hours. I was unaware of how tired I really was until I had started my dynamic without fins final dive. I aborted at 138m due to the immense fatigue. I was pretty disappointed as this is the shortest competition dive I have done in a long time.

I didn't sleep well the next night, had to get up at 6:30am to eat prior to my static and had lactic in my legs from walking to the pool in the morning and in my arms after plaiting my hair. I decided to take some sports supplements to give me energy as I didn't really feel I could rely on my own power any more and they worked for the rest of the competition. The static final was a huge struggle for me. I thought that it was going to be all over when I got my first contraction and mis-heard my coach saying 2:40 – a short time later it was 4 minutes so the first contraction was 3:40. I pushed myself through with pure determination waiting for my coach to tell me when I was in the final three. Eventually Chris let me know that it was just Natalia and I left so I came up some 30s after the bronze medalist Jessica Wilson. I had no idea what the time was, I'd just been focussing on whether my head was still clear or not.

My dynamic heat was 10 hours after my static final, so after the dope test and some lunch I headed back to the hostel for a lie down. The heat was pretty aweful. I was again really tired, but my head was clear. I was in the last heat so had the luxury of knowing exactly what I needed to do. I was told I needed 165m to make the A-final so that's what I did (kind of lucky though that Maria Livjberg didn't do more in the next lane – she was feeling like I had the day before). It was about 10pm before we made it back to the hostel for some steak.

Finally I slept tremendously well and awoke 11 hours later. I was so exhausted. The dynamic final was in the late afternoon so there was no hurry. The nerves had subsided as I was well used to the competition by my sixth event. I approached this dive the same as my other dives in the finals: to do as much as I can with a nice clean exit. I felt stronger again, but it was still a challenge. I didn't realise I was so close to the wall or I might have pushed a little harder...

I'm very pleased to have achieved my goal for the world champs of a medal in each discipline, consistent clean dives throughout and not letting the nerves overpower me.

It was such a relief to be all over!

The after party was good fun, but as usual very messy. I gave up on the wine after about 3 glasses and was pretty sober. Ruth spun out a bit. We didn't eat until about 9:30pm after the prizegiving. The medals were heavy and I won three D4s!!!

My ride to Copenhagen has just arrived!

World Champs day 2

2009-08-22T00:44:00.000+12:00

This morning was the Static heats. I had my usual pre-competition poor sleep. At least I was in bed for 9 hours. Just after breakfast I found out that there had been problems at the pool and the start times would all be pushed back one hour. Someone broke in over night and stole all the computers, video cameras and big TV screens. They were asking around for replacements to get the competition moving again. It sounds like all the officials acted in a calm and professional manner and got the situation under control as quickly as possible and the competition only experienced minimal delays in the scheme of things. Everything ran so smoothly for us athletes yesterday. The TVs showed underwater footage during the dives and results within about 10 mins of each heat. It was very disappointing to come in this morning and see it all gone.

There were only three Kiwis competiting in Static apnea this morning: Chris, Guy and me. Chris was first up and did a clean 4:52. I don't know that he really pushed it that hard! I was in the final heat containing women: me and the three medalists from the Maribor World Champs two years ago. My dive was pretty painful but I had plenty of air and did 6:18, which was enough to convincingly make the A final.

Guy's lungs are obviously feeling better which is great because I know he was a bit scared of how they would react to his first proper breath hold since his squeeze. He did something around 7:50 (sorry I should have checked) and made the A final.

We are now waiting around for the dynamic without fins final.

The World Champs has begun

2009-08-22T00:43:00.000+12:00

Well, here we are, finally in Aarhus, Denmark, competiting at the AIDA individual indoor freediving world championships. The Kiwi team are mostly staying a little out of town at a backpackers in the woods. It is beautiful, peaceful and quiet and I am sleeping fantastically well. Chris left us yesterday when his father called and asked him where they should meet. Ian decided to pop over and support (and surprise) him. My room is a mix of girls from different nationalities: Ruth from Auckland & Northern Ireland representing Great Britain, Maria from Norway who learned to dive with the Lazy Seals and Jana from Canada who just doesn't have a team. We're doing our best to adopt as many honorary Kiwis as possible.

We had our first competition day of the world champs today with the dynamic without fins heats. There was much excitment with a lot of national records and black outs as people pushed to their limits to try to make finals.

Suzy was one of the early starters and the first girl to do a long enough dive to qualify for the finals. She did a personal best of 132m.

I had nominated pretty high (the highest of all the women) so was in the final heat containing women (the heats are mixed sexes) so knew essentially what I had to do. I had nominated 127m so wanted to do that as a minimum, so just turned at the 125 and came up at 128m. Quite luxurious really. I definitely felt nerves but they weren't dibilitating as they have been in the past. My buoyancy wasn't great in the deep pool, but it wasn't too much of a challenging dive and I qualified 7th out of 8th for the A final. The announcer thought I only did 118m (not sure how he figured that out) and everyone kept asking me afterwards "what happened?"

All our three boys nominated high so were in the last heat and knew exactly what they were required to do to make the final. Will made it through with a very clean and conserrvative looking dive to 162m. Kerian has his first sizeable samba that made him re-submerge his airways at about the same distance as Will and scored him a red card. Chris made it to the surface somewhere around 140m but also blacked out.

The static heats are tomorrow morning. I'm once again in the last heat containing 4 of the world's best women. Hopefully I will have the luxury of not having to push it too hard again. The dynamic without fins finals are in the early evening.

AIDA International individual indoor world championships 2009, Aarhus, Denmark

2009-08-22T00:33:00.004+12:00

18-22 August 2009

AIDA NZ has a blog up and running that Kiwi divers attending the world champs in Denmark can post to. My posts regarding the world champs will be both here and there. To see the posts by other divers go to:
http://nzfreediveteamindenmark.blogspot.com/

Nordic Deep, Lysekil, Sweden

2009-08-19T22:56:00.002+12:00

freediving competition, 10 – 16 August 2009
25m pool

My results:
Tuesday 6'33” static
Wednesday 154m dynamic without fins, national record (exceeding world record)
Thursday 159m dynamic without fins, national record (exceeding world record)
Friday 6'03” static

We're staying in a scout camp called Lysestrand near Lysekil. It's a beautiful setting in the country side. There are lots of trees and the “beach” (it's sandless) is just a short walk away. You can see the water from the deck. The sun has been shining and I have been catching up on some vitamin D and actually tanned up a bit. There are lots of people speaking foreign Nordic languages, but we have a good contingent of Kiwis and honorary Kiwis here competing while recovering from jet lag. The competition is well organised. There are a lot of people, but plenty of room to find your own space.

I felt a few nerves for my first day of competition. I guess a lot of things were different and I haven't really done a lot of statics in competition recently. I felt a bit like throwing up an unfamiliar breakfast but managed to settle down just in time for the dive. I was very relaxed and my first contraction was at about 4 minutes without even needing to revert to forced relaxation techniques. I struggled to deal with the contractions so will need to mentally prepare myself a bit better for the world champs. It was essentially a fairly easy and clean dive however, with plenty left for next time I hope!

Day two I was still feeling a bit nervous. I guess because it was a new pool (I didn't really test it for dynamics the day before) and different people. The Swedes also seem to like to push people through on their top times as fast as possible with 7 minute intervals, so it feels a bit rushed moving from the warm up zone to the performance zone in time for the countdown, but it wasn't too bad. I was doing dynamic without fins and got a bit late getting into the pool, but the competition was pushed out 4 minutes after Jens' black out, which saved me a bit. There were stairs on the side of the pool that were about 4m wide right where I would normally be thinking about coming up just at the 150m, so I visualised pushing off and coming up just after them. Unfortunately I didn't really think about continuing if I felt good so pretty much just pushed off at 150 and came up right on the corner of the stairs for a new NZ record of 154m. My first couple of lengths were pretty atrocious so I've add a bit of thought about them in my visualisation to make sure they get better.

On day three I repaired the few issues I had the day before and did a nice 159m dynamic without fins without too much trouble.

By day four I was getting pretty tired and had contracted a sore throat from one or both of my room mates. I didn't sleep particularly well while I was there and my static really started to reinforce this. It was a struggle most of the way with my first contraction at 2:45. I pushed through though and reached my minimum of 6 minutes. I was still pretty clear headed but it was hard work.

I managed to win the women's competition on my static and dynamic performances without getting in the sea. Ruth was a close second and Suzy was third.

The cold kicked in a couple of days later and I'm hoping it disappears in time for the World Champs. It is really just in my throat and sinuses so hopefully won't affect my performance beyond perhaps having to equalise once in the pool.

I'd like to thank the organisers of the Nordic Deep for a fun competition and the other competitors for their hospitality. It was sooooo nice to just show up at the pool and not have to do anything other than compete for a change!

Aarhus, Denmark

2009-08-14T03:26:00.000+12:00

3 – 10 August 2009

I decided to spend a week in Aarhus prior to the world champs to get the tourist fanaticism out of my system by visiting the main tourist attractions and it was also good to orientate myself a bit. It worked out that we were training in the evenings anyway so I had to take things a little easier than usual during the day so as to not be incredibly tired for the sessions. I stayed with fellow freediver Elisabeth Kristofferson, my third wonderful host in a row. I was given my own room so I managed to catch up on some sleep.

Elisabeth was working during the week so I mucked around in town a bit, caught up on a few things that needed doing and generally chilled out. I visited Aarhus cathedral and the Viking museum on the first day, the old cathedral and the “prettiest street in Aarhus” on the second day and wandered the town a bit. I'm not allowed to shop due to budget and luggage weight issues so I'm avoiding them. At our first evening training at the Spanish baths I completely lost count of the number of lengths I had done after I'm informed only 50m. I must have been so relaxed after my sleep in.

On Friday I met Elisabeth after she finished work and we went to the beach. We managed to find a little sand to sit on, but it was definitely a city beach with grass and rocks and lots of people. We went to the local amusement park were we had a picnic and a wine and listened to the live music in the sunshine. I didn't do any rides. I'm trying to be conservative with my body, plus they were expensive. Elisabeth did the scariest rollercoaster where you sit underneath the tracks with your legs hanging free, but it only lasted one minute including the 30s slow climb up.

On Saturday we decided to skip pool training and have a day at the museums with a quick dry training session as a break. We visited the Aros art museum. It's a pretty fantastic building. A brick box on the exterior and very sculptural (reminiscent on Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenhiem) on the inside. There was a wide and interesting variety of art from all eras and in many forms. We spent a few hours there covering the whole museum then went to the old town museum Den Gamble By. It's a little village where they have saved and rebuilt old building from around Denmark. Each one is set up with displays of different trades or styles of living, for example there's a post office, a stable, a tobacanist, a distillery and brewery, a bakery (where they actually sold yummy food), a hat maker, different classes of living & bedrooms, etc. We filled up the afternoon easily – it was a pretty tiring day.

On Sunday morning we finally trained in the pool we'll be using for the World Champs. My dive wasn't great but the distance was, so I was pretty happy to be back where I need to be. We caught a bus up to the Japanese Zen Gardens where we spent the afternoon. It was very beautiful and would be an easy place to just sit for a long time in the sun. We pulled out all the yoga poses we could remember and took photos of ourselves in the beautiful setting. It took us a while to get home as it shut half an hour earlier than we expected and we had to walk quite a way to catch a bus or wait almost an hour. So we walked, complete with dive gear (of course). Why is my dive gear so heavy??? It was a bit of a late night as I had to book my travel and pack before leaving early in the morning to head up to Lysekil for the Nordic Deep freediving competition.

The journey was not as bad as I anticipated, however it did last 12 hours. I had to leave at 7am and catch the local bus to the train station, the train for 3 hours to Fredrikshavn, a taxi to the ferry (as I'd just about killed my back walking the previous time, and it was raining), the ferry for 3.5 hours to Gothenburg, a tram to central station, a quick run through the station to catch the bus to Lysekil. I met Sofia and Jens on the bus so the journey wasn't too boring. There were huge traffic delays and the trip took much longer than expected, but our brilliant bus driver took a scenic route (back road) to skip the queues, then drove on the wrong side of the road for about 5 mins to get us to the ferry at least. We overtook the bus that had left an hour before and there was another bus on the other side to pick people up, but that was our pick up point for the Nordic Deep anyway.

Gothenburg, Sweden

2009-08-07T00:20:00.008+12:00

28 July - 3 August 2009

I felt I needed a break once I made it to Gothenburg. The luggage had been incredibly heavy to carry and I have since reconsidered how to pack it. I was staying at Christian's apartment, but he was away kayaking until Friday.

We had a static training session on the first morning. I struggled a bit, but did OK. My two buddies then showed me up with a PB each. I went for a bit of a walk in the afternoon to get my bearings but generally rested and figured out what the city had to offer.

Training on Thursday was in a 50m pool again. I tried a dynamic which was going pretty well until a member of the public jumped on my head at 100m. In the afternoon I wandered around the town and discovered the Haga (old working class area). I even managed to fit in a well overdue hair cut. Jens took me salsa dancing in the evening so the red party dress had it's first outing of the trip. Unfortunately I seem to have very little rhythm or co-ordination and I didn't really bring dancing shoes. It was fun though.

I had a great plan for Friday and decided to go ahead with it despite the weather. I did the Open top bus tour, which was incredibly cold, but luckily it didn't rain. I even did the unthinkable and purchased a tourist plastic poncho. It didn't quite rain though so I was not obliged to wear it!

Then I took a boat out to the New Alvsborg fortress. This is an island at the habour mouth. It we essentially where the city of Gothenburg defended itself from invaders coming in on the sea. It was pretty miserable. The fortress was dull and the weather horrendous – I was almost blown right of the island. I waited in the cafe until the boat came back for us, and ate my packed lunch.

Back in the city I rode the elevator up an 86m high building nicknamed the Lipstick to see the view.

Then visited the Gothenburg city museum and the Botanic gardens before heading back to the apartment. Christian had arrived home, so I finally met him in the flesh, and we went to his friend Patrick's home for some drinks with some of the friends he had been kayaking with. Another late night!

We trained dynamics on Saturday morning. Finally I had a fairly successful session with my fin on in the 50m pool. From the pool I went to the Rohsska (design) museum which had a few interesting exhibitions: a couple of fashion designers, Swedish design generally and one quite fun one with hundreds of citrus squeezers of all shapes, sizes and colours.

Gothenburg Art museum however, was a bit disappointing.

Afterwards I needed to sit down and took a Paddan boat canal tour so I could have a rest. Fortunately the sun had come out again and it was quite pleasant. I then visited the Universeum, which had aquariums of all sorts of fish including specific tanks of fish from places around Sweden. I also visited the dangerous creatures area and the rainforest where there were birds, monkeys, iguanas, frogs etc roaming free in a simulated rainforest environment. It was pretty good.

The final visit for the day was to the adjacent amusement park: Liseberg. I didn't really feel like going on rides so I wandered around and watched a show. I was getting pretty tired and headed home. I think I spent 13 hours out being busy and over-did it a little.

Sunday, therefore, became another tourist rest day. We managed a sleep in as Christian had been out late too at the U2 concert. We trained late morning and I had some success with attempting a no fins max in the 50m pool. I spent the afternoon preparing for my trip to Denmark the following day. We bought a chunk of moose meat and some smoked reindeer for dinner, which Patrick cooked exquisitly for us with an entree of mushrooms on white toast and ice-cream & chocolate for dessert. Unfortunately this was the fourth late night in a row, and I had an early morning start to pack my bags again and get on ferry to Frederikshavn, Demark. It all went pretty well but the 1.1km walk between the ferry and the train with my 40kg bags was a killer. I think I'll get a taxi on the return trip next week!

Stockholm, Sweden

2009-08-06T23:45:00.007+12:00

25-28 July 2009

After two 12 hour plane trips and a couple of other smaller ones I finally arrived in Stockholm. It was about 38 hours of travelling and I really didn't sleep well. And, the first long flight didn't allow you to start the films at your discretion, so it was pretty boring.

My fabulous host Sofus picked me up from the airport. I like it that all freedivers seem to wear freediving shirts so you can find them in airports, train stations and the like. It was about mid-day, so rather than give in to the fatigue we instead walked around the Stockholm city centre for about 4 hours. It was great to have a guided tour. We visited the town hall, parliament and Gamla Stan (the old town). I discovered that the sun does not set until after 10pm and I think I have awoken every day at about 4am so far thanks to the early dawn. This is Sofus in front of a cathedral:

The second day we visited the Nordic museum & Vasa museum where we learned all about Nordic history and culture. The Vasa was a poorly designed ship that sank about 300m into it's maiden voyage, it didn't even make it out of the harbour! It has recently been discovered at the bottom of the harbour and restored, and now has it's own museum built around it. On Monday all the museums were closed and it was my 30th birthday. We went training at the pool. It was my first attempt in a 50m pool for quite some time, and went OK considering the jet lag. After we had lunch in a cafe by the river in the sun and walked along the riverbank by the old allotment gardens, which were very cute. They were areas of land that were allocated to apartment or city dwelling families in post war times (I think, from memory) so they could grow veges. Now they seem to mainly grow flowers and it's very pretty.

We then visited the Woodlands cemetary world heritage site designed by Asplund in the early 1900s. Unfortunately we got a bit late and couldn't get inside any of the chapels or the visitor's centre, but did have a look at all the buildings from the outside. The cemetary was very cute. There were lots of pine trees in amongst the graves that gave it quite and eiree feeling. This is peaking through the peep hole to one of the chapels, the crematorium and the woodlands chapel (made famous by Russell Walden I think!):We followed this up with a trip the the Globen (Globe stadium). It's the largest spherical building in Scandinavia. Again we couldn't get inside but there was a lot of information about the building given in a display outside.
We had a very nice birthday dinner and over-loaded a bit on a variety of chocolate cakes and red wine. Freedivers are such light-weights when it comes to these things!

Sofus had to head back to work on Tuesday. I managed to walk down to the train station and get myself to town without breaking my back with my massive pack. I think I have about 40kg of gear – mostly dive gear as I've been pretty conservative with my general packing. I found time to visit the Architecture museum which had an interesting temporary exhibition on decoration in architecture and juxtaposed old styles with new. They also had their permanent exhibition which covers the development of architecture in Stockholm, and quite an interesting temporary exhibition regarding setting up a town as a new World Heritage Site, and what that involves. I then caught the train over to Gothenburg.

My Trip of a Lifetime

2009-08-06T23:44:00.000+12:00

I have just started out on my “trip of a lifetime”. Thanks to the recession there's not a great deal of architectural work on in NZ and it seemed like a good time to get away and see what I'm capable of.

Here's the outline of my itinerary:

24 July NZ to Stockholm, Sweden
28 July Gothenburg, Sweden
3 August Aarhus, Denmark
10 August Lyskil, Sweden, for Nordic Deep freediving competition
16 August Aarhus, Denmark, for AIDA individual indoor World Champs
23 August Copenhagen, Denmark
26 August Cairo, Egypt
29 August Dahab, Egypt, for Triple Depth freediving competition and general depth training
4 November Madrid, Spain
7 November Miami, USA
8 November Long Island, Bahamas, for AIDA individual depth World Champs
8 December Miami, USA
21 December Quito, Ecuador, for tours around the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Peru & Bolivia
7 February Buenos Aires, Argentina
11 February Santiago, Chile
23 February Arrive home

I intend to keep a bit of a trip diary going on my blog during this time, so watch this space!

Media/articles

2009-08-06T22:46:00.005+12:00

The following articles have recently been published in the new NZSpearo magazine, the first is a profile on me and the second is an article I wrote describing my training principles. Click on them to enlarge. If you want copies of the magazine you can contact Mike from Ocean Hunter: mike@oceanhunter.co.nz. The third issue has just been released and I hope to post my article from that soon.

Wellington Winter Champs 2009

2009-08-06T22:41:00.004+12:00

Indoor freediving competition organised by the Lazy Seal Freediving Club
11-12 July, Porirua, Wellington, New Zealand
25m pool

My results:
152m dynamic without fins, national record (exceeding world record)
191m dynamic, national record

This was the fourth annual Wellington Winter Champs that I've organised with the Lazy Seal Freediving Club. We were able to choose one event per day as it suited us. The competition was fierce with Guy Brew completing a 9:03 static, the biggest breath hold ever in competition, followed closely behind by Dave Mullins' 232m dynamic without fins, exceeding his world record by 19m. Suzy Osler, who some may remember as Suzy Kensington made an exciting come back with a 188m dynamic and briefly held the national record and her world no 2 position again. Ruth Griffin smashed the dynamic British national record with 165m (in her flash new suit and hyperfin – she finally got rid of the tiny little training fins!). I managed a pretty comfortable 152m dynamic without fins exceeding my world record by 1m, and was fairly pleased. I congratulated myself with a dinner of venison, a glass of red wine and some mellowpuffs for dessert, and managed an early-ish night.

Day two I strangely felt less pressure than day one even though Suzy had now set the standard pretty high for dynamics. It was actually a very comfortable dive, and I feel my technique is finally improving. It was definitely time to come up when I did though!

Apniests' Challenge 2009

2009-08-06T22:35:00.006+12:00

indoor freediving competition organised by the Lazy Seal Freediving Club (aka me)
16-17 May, Porirua, Wellington, New Zealand
25m pool

My results:
6'18” static
155m dynamic
151m dynamic without fins, equal to world/national record

This competition occurred just after I had finished my “break” (aka training with less intensity & motivation) before starting training for the world champs. I didn't have high expectations and just wanted to complete clean consistent performances and see how it felt to complete multiple long dives in a single day and more the next. I guess I was a little disappointed that I didn't push myself harder in the earlier dives (STA & DYN) to really see the effects of this on the third dive in just over 24 hours. The first two dives were pretty easy. I had been playing with my no fins arm technique and had not really conquered it yet – I'm a bit slow to adapt to these things so have a bit of work to do in that area to make my DNF more effective again.

Update

2009-08-06T22:32:00.002+12:00

It's been a while since I've found the time to update my blog I'm sorry. Life has been pretty chaotic since I arrived home from the Bahamas. I had a lot of things that needed tidying up before I left, as well as organising a couple of local pool competitions, plus I've been planning the big seven month world trip that I have now started. The blog has therefore taken a backseat for sometime unfortunately.

I'll post some things that should have been written some time ago and then update you on the current affairs.

2009-04-26T12:57:00.003+12:00

Fred & Jana

me, Alex, Herbie, Linden

Megumi, Leo, Tomoko, Ryuzo

Walter & the Kiwis: Kerian, Joy, me, William

me & Liv

Happy & Rob

Herbert, Mads, Walid

Simon, me, Linden, David

Judge Mermaid Linden: http://www.mermaidsinmotion.com/

Recollections

2009-04-26T12:50:00.003+12:00

I had a wonderful time in the Bahamas, met some beautiful people and learned a lot. I was generally disappointed by the loss of training time firstly due to the unfortunate squeeze event, then the tiny, nagging sinus issue that I feel I would have hardly noticed should I not been diving. But the Bahamas is a beautiful place and once I sat back and started relaxing and breaking down the social/geographical barriers between the two different accomodation locations, it was pretty enjoyable. I was anticipating going deeper than 52m but with the limited number of deep dives I managed to complete it was problematic to keep pushing. I still have no issues with equalisation (when healthy), so am keen to see how I go later in the year when I will finally have time on my hands to train at depth.

I will put up some photos of the people.

Vertical Blue 09 part two

2009-04-26T12:46:00.001+12:00

We're now two thirds of the way through the competition days. I managed another two secessful dives and aborted one after my nose clip leaked excess quantities of air during the duck dive. Sometimes it leaks and I just deal with it as it goes away once I get to freefall and start my mouthful equalisation (as it is a lot less forced), but this was a lot more than usual. I'm quite annoyed with the whole nose clip situation – they seem to be only designed for large noses. I always have to tighten them as far as they go and they often still leak.

Sucessful dive number one was 49m and number two 52m. Both were constant weight without fins. As I have concluded that I do not have enough time to work on anything else and I did not bring my fin anyway.

I have been struggling with a few psychological issues that have been nagging away in the back of my mind. Firstly there was the lung squeeze, however I feel this has cleared up. I'm now more sensitive to the feeling of fluid in my lungs after a dive and while there has been a little it seems to be less after every dive now, to a point where I am confident it will not happen again on this trip. Secondly there is the inexperience issue and the fact that I feel a bit panicky at depth. I have been working essentially solely on this. All my concentration on dives is focussed around staying relaxed and avoiding having contractions to the point where I am letting go of other important aspects of my dives. On the 49m dive I was counting my strokes off the surface but completely forgot to pay attention and did three more than usual. I think that to go deeper I am going to have to start to pay attention to some of the technique issues. I've decided that I am not going to be scared of depth any more, so we'll see if I can control this powerful tool that is the mind. The third issue is the basic fear of blacking out, however we have such a great crew of safety divers that this too is completely irrational.

Sorry I didn't get around to publishing this one earlier guys!

Under water photos

2009-04-09T04:21:00.000+12:00

Thanks to Simon & Hyde for taking some nice pics of me.

Vertical Blue 09, Dean's Blue Hole, Bahamas

2009-04-05T07:51:00.004+12:00

The competition is now well under way. We concluded the first three day round and are currently having a rest day. I sat out the first day opting instead to train the day prior to get another (3rd) training session in before competing.

On day two I nominated 47m constant weight without fins. I didn't sleep well the night before and was in a bit of a poor psychological and physical state on waking which I did not manage to overcome. I overheated prior to my dive and did not allow myself enough time on the platform to relax. Negative thoughts plagued me up to and during the dive and I turned early at 40m. My main focus here in the Bahamas is to try to remain relaxed at depth and I was anything but, so I decided to turn back. I think it was a good decision rather than pushing myself and potentially experiencing a further set back.

On day three I nominated 46m as in some crazy psychological way I felt much more comfortable with this. I put my wetsuit on early as I had run into troubles the day before due to the fact that I was hot and sticky and the wetsuit took a lot longer than usual to get myself into. I arrived at the platform about 20 mins prior to my dive to ensure I had plenty of time to find a good head space and relax. The competition no longer got to me and the dive was pretty good and relaxed however safety diver Simon said I still carried the old panicky expression on my face. There is still plenty to work on and I feel a bit slow but apart from pushing the streamlining I really do not want to speed up any further. The dive was a little under 2 minutes. There were no difficulties on the return swim and I feel quite nicely weighted being neutral around 15m. The duck dives have been worrying me as I seem to use up so much energy trying to leave the surface, but I have decided to just relax and go with whatever happens now as hopefully this will help to decrease the stress during my dive and allow me to push out dive times and depths further.

Here are some photos care of Judge Grant:

Dean's Blue Hole is now fairly pristine. There was plenty of light at depth (for me) and the weed has mostly cleared away. The wind and tide (and possibly the numerous divers hanging around the hole) still stir up a little sand and seem to reduce the visibility as the competition progresses each day. I have been for some very pleasant afternoon cool off swims at the hole and I feel this is when the hole is at it's most beautiful.

For more information on the Vertical Blue Invitational 09 competition, please go to http://www.verticalblue.net/ and look in the news section. There are some great photos of divers by Fred Buyle on there, some that give you a real sense of the deep space.

The end of training days

2009-04-01T09:45:00.004+13:00

Today was the last training day. I managed to lose an entire week with firstly the lung squeeze and then a blockage in my left sinus. The sinus still is not perfect but it allows me one dive prior to blocking up and creating an enormous pressure bubble under my left check. I have a variety of drugs that people keep pushing in my direction, and they seem to be slowly working, or it is just clearing up regardless. The main concern is that it forces me to equalise a lot more regularly than I usually would creating another level of discomfort. I did manage a few dives to check my buoyancy at 15m (it was perfectly neutral there fortunately with my massive 3.5kg neck weight) and practise duck dives, but I have a long way to go in my seven remaining dives.

I have managed three sucessful dives over the last three training days, starting at 32m and building up 5m at a time. In comparison to last year it is so easy. The massive tension (panic) at depth has gone and I am finally finding a relaxed state of mind and body allowing me to remain much more in control of my dives. I am hoping this stays with me as the dives become deeper. I feel I have become stronger and more efficient from doing some sprint work in training. The duck dives no longer feel like they take so much out of me that I don't know how I manage to continue. As usual, I just wish I had more time to adapt to and deal with the remaining technique and psychological issues. I am certain that I have plenty more in me, but don't want to do anything stupid that pushes me back further or discourages me from future deep freediving experiences.

Did I mention that the hole cleared up yesterday and was absolutely stunning for a brief moment?

What a contrast to only a couple of days earlier!

Weediness

2009-03-28T10:13:00.003+13:00

Squeeze

2009-03-26T15:58:00.003+13:00

Training day one gave me a great shock.

I felt fine in the morning. My body was not as stiff as I would generally expect after the flights and I had finally eaten and slept fairly well. I still had a slight sore throat from the dry aeroplane air but had consumed a great deal of water.

I started on my goal of relaxing at depth. We set the line to 45m. I planned to do a calm, slow free immersion dive and see how it felt. I took my full breath and left the surface. My neck weight immediately struck my nose clip, knocking it from my face. I held the rope and calmly replaced it, continuing to pull myself downward. I wore little lead, knowing that I could control my ascent and descent with the rope and just taking things easily focussing on relaxing above everything else. I pulled downwards. The dive felt good. I was calm with only one quick moment of negative thoughts on the descent. There were no issues with equalisation and my mouthfill was working fine. It became dark before 40m. I felt a large amount of tape on the rope, thinking it was the markings two meters from the base plate I turned reaching downwards in the attempt to practice a good turn and tap the base plate. I never felt it, but decided to go back. I was buoyant from about 30m on the ascent, and spread my arms to slow myself. The dive was a little under 3 minutes and felt great despite poor technique. The speed was slow but consistent throughout. I surfaced with a lot left in me and feeling great. I took a few hook breaths and completed my surface protocol then started coughing up blood. Large amounts of blood. I couldn't stop. Then I felt like vomiting too as I gagged on the blood. It was hard to breathe and everything was an effort.

Dr Frank was on the platform and did not seem too worried. Megumi swam me and all my stuff back to shore and I breathed oxygen for about 25 mins. By this time I could breathe normally without having to cough. Walking back to the car made me tired. My heart was racing and I could not breathe well. I was wheezing with every breath. Back at the accomodation Mads had a pulseoximeter. My pulse was high (just over 100) and my O2 saturation was low (mid-80s). Herbert called his doctor and I was recommended to breathe pure oxygen, drink a lot of water, rest, be careful while sleeping (or avoid it) to ensure I didn't drown in the fluid in my lungs, take antibiotics, anti-mucous pills, and something else that Sara had in her bag of medicines and kindly shared with me. Luckily within about 4 hours of the accident the wheezing cleared up, my pulse was back down and my O2 saturation was back up to about 96-97%. I had a good feed and went to bed. In the morning my lungs were a little tender on a deep breath but not really ever sore. I was advised to take two days off, and didn't attempt to take any big inhales in that time. By the third day I could fully pack and my lungs felt fine.

This was my first and hopefully last lung squeeze. As freedivers most of us have spat a little blood before, but this was much more scarey as there was a large quantity. We have speculated the causes: pushing too hard too soon (although I think back and wonder why it did not happen earlier if this is the reason - the dive did not feel particularly challenging), not enough recent experience, diving without warm up so suffering larger contractions at depth (however this would surely require my residual volume to have substantially increased over the past year, which is potentially conceivable), fatigue, dehydration, etc. The main issue I have in my mind is that the dive felt good and was not hurried at all. An interesting one was put to me today that it could be some kind reverse squeeze due the dried out nature of my lungs post air travel. It seems feasible and I guess we'll never know. It could have just been the combination of a variety of small things.

I really do not want to go back to doing dives with warm ups and having to wear a thicker wetsuit and more weights. My head goes cloudy towards the end of dives with any kind of additional breathing prior to diving increasing the the chance of black out and I always feel the cold if I am in the water without moving much. I guess I will have to work on that relaxation and staying control of any contractions instead, and start a bit shallower next time.

Today was my first day back in the water. I have sinus issues on the left side, probably the residue of my air travel. It has improved over the course of the day and I am hoping that by tomorrow I will be back to normal and starting to ease slowly into some deeper dives.

The Hole

2009-03-26T15:56:00.001+13:00

After a little over 38 hours of travelling, I finally arrived at Deadman's Cay, Long Island, the Bahamas. I was absolutely shattered after stunted sleep and poor eating. Unfortunately no one thought to come and pick me up from the airport, but I found Joyce (Charlie's wife), who I recognised from last year (and she was helpful in wearing a Vertical Blue t-shirt) and pleaded for a lift (actually from her friends), which they kindly consented to, so no real dramas (thanks Joyce!). I even managed to escape for a few hours from the horrid LAX international airport with some friends of my flatmate who I crashed into in Auckland when their earlier flight to LA was delayed by about three hours. They had a rental car and we had a look at some of the beaches and had some dinner (our lunch) in Santa Monica. I'm still constantly surprised about the lack of airport security in the US for those in transit. Americans are strange in many ways...

I feel I'm a little jinxed. Whenever I go anywhere to dive I seem to attract poor weather. This trip seems to be no different. I have little recollection of the last flight as I fell in and out of slumber but I did notice the strong winds as we came in to land and the mini plane was dipping sideways offering views over the island alternating with rapidly moving fluffy clouds on a blue backdrop. I was awakened by a strong urge to try to catch a glimpse of the blue hole from above. Unfortunately I was seated on the wrong side of the plane to have any remote hope.

Upon arrival I was rushed off to Dean's Blue Hole with other divers staying at Ellen's Inn. A quick swim and a few shallow dives in my togs and mask refreshed me and reminded me a lot of last year's arrival. The wind is strong and the sand blasts at your legs while you dress. The hole is once again full of weed (however there seems to be much less plastic). The weed is not isolated on the surface but hangs in the water to great depth, suspended in waiting for the unsuspecting diver to swim through or grab onto their lanyard or fin. With the weed comes and unexpectedly pleasant surprise. There is much more fish life around this year. I have already seen sizable fish swimming near the line and the little shrimps and crabs in the weed were noted after they fell on me during a quick weed ball fight (think snow-balls). There was a strong current on the surface as the water dragged in by the oversized breakers barely visible just around the corner in the open sea pushed the surface water around the hole. The visibility was once again missing. On my first day a mere five meters and dark. The “blue” hole was once again clouded by floating particles and posing more as a black hole, sucking our spirits away. To top things off, it is colder than last year. At about 22 degrees I can only hope that it does not become colder on the descent. I packed my wetsuit but not with the intent of wearing it. He first day was beautiful and refreshing, but the novelty will wear thin with time. On sunny days the temperature increases slightly, but we need more than an hour at a time.

But there is hope, the forecast is due to improve in the coming week and each day the hole changes. Today I could see the side of the hole while diving. Rather than the fear of crashing I felt last year with no experience of visibility, I enjoyed seeing those walls again, a sign that I am finally beginning to relax at depth.

Preparing for the Bahamas

2009-03-24T06:02:00.002+13:00

My preparation for the Bahamas trip has been a bit of a debarcle once again.

Dive Camp was great. The Lazy Seals booked a bach by Lake Taupo for 9 days in early January. About half a dozen of us dived every day and learned new skills from each other. The weather held up for us; the sun shone and the lake was calm. I do tend to panic a bit at depth and have decided that this is something I really need to work through this year as if I am going to achieve great depths I want to be fairly comfortable down there. To this point I have been relying on pure determination and the fact that I have a good breath hold. I have not yet had any troubles with equalisation or felt a great deal of pressure on my chest. My focus was on relaxing at depth, not on achieving any great depth or worrying too much about technique or fancy equipment. I did a few nice slow dives with hangs at -40m just with mask, snorkle and bi-fins, and quite a few -20m dives safetying others. It was becoming more comfortable. It was intended to be a good warm up for the summer.

Since then I've managed a couple of dives in the Wellington harbour which is limited to -15m. The weather and lack of enough buddies to keep it safe has been working against me once again this summer.

I have been doing a lot of dry lung stretching and simulation of depth as well as I can in the pool; A lot of negatives and some sprints. I have figured out that my sense of panic at depth stems from a few areas that I have been focussing in on as best I can:

inexperience – this is problematic when you don't have suitable dive sites or buddies or enough time off work.
inability to relax while moving rapidly/sprinting – after years of pool work I can easily relax when everything is slow and consistent, but have found that as soon as I speed it up I become tense. I have been doing some dynamic sprint work to teach myself to relax, not contract and maintain consistency at the pace I have to use to overcome the buoyancy issues related to deep diving.
Generally not feeling like I have enough air in my lungs created by the pressure at depth – I have been doing some FRC and negative dynamics in the pool, closely monitored by my buddies of course. My focus during these was again on relaxing, keeping a consistent stroke and not having contractions.

Apart from this, I felt like my general fitness was getting back to where it should be, and I was starting to achieve in my long dynamics again.

I guess time will tell if these simulations are actually helpful or not.

Coaching

2009-03-24T05:18:00.001+13:00

I'm just finishing up my first round of remote coaching, mainly focussing on DNF, with a couple of Scandinavian guys who have been a pleasure to work with. I'm quite sad to not be continuing on with them. It has been going pretty well, and I realised that I do have a lot of knowledge and experience now that I can pass on and help others with. I've quite enjoyed the sense of purpose it gives me and I'm looking forward to seeing their ENORMOUS improvements over the coming months (no pressure guys!!! ;) )!!!

Please send me an email or respond to this post with your details (I won't publish it) if you're keen to find out more. I have a couple of spaces available again now and am keen to keep it going.

Update

2009-03-24T05:10:00.003+13:00

Well, it's been a long time since I found the time or energy to post anything here and before launching into the current circumstances I'd like to go over some of the highlights from 2008.

2008 was a really great year for me. I always expected it would be as 2007 was such a let down, and I had learned and changed a lot of things in my training and general dive preparation, plus my lungs had significanly expanded from the previous year.

Apart from all the national records some highlights were:
- a three week trip to the Bahamas where I could work on some depth training
- a sucessful world record attempt in a local pool competition (although I think being published in the Guiness Book will be more exciting – just have to hold it for another month or so, and apologies in advance for the unimaginative Christmas presents if I do make it in!!!)
- being voted by my peers as”world's best female freediver, 2008” (thanks for the support guys!)
- learning more about myself and what drives me
- discovering that there's really no limits as to what we are capable of - I keep happily surprising myself!

7:01 static record video

2008-12-11T22:20:00.000+13:00

Ocean Hunter Deep Obsession 2008

2008-11-19T21:42:00.006+13:00

The competition was held over two days last weekend in Auckland. Day one we selected one pool based event to compete in and on Sunday we chose between constant weight with or without fins.

The Panmure pool is 33m long and rather shallow. I chose to do a static finally as the last one I did in competition was at the world champs in Slovenia, July last year, and so much has changed since then.

My top time was 4:30pm, which I found rather excruciating to wait around all day for. I had a good sleep in despite sleeping in a strange bed. After breakfast I did some nice slow relaxed body stretching followed by some fairly aggressive lung stretching. I was a bit concerned about my lungs after being sick for a little over two weeks prior. An attempt at a static a few days earlier had gone very poorly with a lot of pain around my sternum.

The briefing was at 12:30pm, so there was a lot of waiting around. I managed to find some time to lie down and read a magazine in the morning, which relaxed me a lot. At the pool I ate again then found a good spot to sit where I read my book and could see the divers before me. I had a few nerves but not too badly. I really just decided to take the dive as it came as I didn't know how my body would react. 30 mins to top I took my time changing into my wetsuit. I wanted to be back to see Maria's dive - she's doing so well for a new diver (4:52 static). So sat on the side of the pool during her dive then hopped in once she was done. For about 8 mins before my top I was in the water, in the performance zone, just chilling with my head on the side of the pool. I managed to really relax and was in a great mental zone by the time I heard my countdown. Just to re-iterate, I don't do warm ups any more. I didn't even stretch again after the routine in the morning. I heard my 30s call and started to prepare for my inhale. I don't fully pack for statics any more, as it allows me to remain more relaxed and in control throughout the dive. I do about 20-23 packs as compared to the 30-40 that I need for dynamics. I managed to find my sspace again really quickly once I was down. Time went quickly and I was incredibly relaxed. My first contraction was about 3:35 and I only had about 4 or 5 before 5 mins. I was pretty comfortable through the whole dive and came up with room to spare at 7:01. I had gone much further than anticipated and wanted to have a nice clean dive for this year's rankings. Anyway, I'm now a bit gutted that I didn't wait another 2s as then I would have been 1st on the rankings, but I'm pretty pleased with my result! I should mention too that I had half a glass of red wine and quite a lot of red meat the night before as usual.

The static was just one of those amazingly beautiful relaxed dives that really reminds me why I love freediving so much.

Sunday was lake day: Lake Pupuke on Auckland's North Shore. I've never enjoyed diving Pupuke - the name says it all really. We had a 50m limit as no one is quite sure what we might get stuck in if we go much deeper. In contrast to the day before, we were rushed in the morning: the boys weren't ready and then we couldn't find the motorway (Auckland signage is useless and our instructions missed a few steps). We managed to arrive at the lake 1 minute before I had to check in. I changed and jumped on the boat, which then took a couple of trips out to the dive line. I was getting cold in my Orca tri-suit on the boat before starting my dive. 7 mins to top I finally had the space on the boat to put my monofin on. I didn't really get into any kind of good head space. I had nominated 50m constant weight. It was only my second deep dive of the season and it was probably a bit silly since I'd been sick, but I thought after the day before it would be OK, and the previous dive I had done I was pretty relaxed for. Unfortunately it was overcast and there had been a bit of rain so the visibility was down to about 1-2m. It was also very windy so I managed to get two mouthfills of water during my final breath. My sinuses behaved themselves and I didn't feel any pain on the way down. There was a thermocline somewhere around 15-18m that I remember feeling a bit then pushed it away. Below this the brown top layer clears up but there is no light. I could not see the rope at all and hit the base plate before seeing it despite it being lit by a torch. It was a long way down and I was falling over to the side again but I'm not good at pulling out of things once I've started and have it set in my mind. I found a tag easily and swam back up to the surface hopefully following the rope in the darkness. I was very tense and tried to make myself relax. I openned my eyes at one point and was relieved to see my safety. He said I was having huge contractions, which normally comes from the huge discomfort. I don't often remember them though - it's the whole mind over matter thing as I block them from my consciousness. Anyway, I made it to the surface, did two hook breaths and then blacked out for about 2s in which time my safety managed to grab my fluid goggles by the lenses, pushing them both out to disappear into the darkness and making an already unsucessful dive rather more depressing due to the expense of replacing them. : ( Oh well, I have a few things to work on with depth. 6 of us nominated 50m and only 2 got white cards: Guy and Kerian. I couldn't physically improve on any of my depth results from this year anyway due to the 50m limit. The black out wa a bit memorable of last summer's one. I wonder if near the begining of the season, when my body hasn't yet adapted, if I'm a bit more susceptible to shallow water black out. In both instances I was a bit underweighted which would mean I was flying rather rapidly towards the surface.

I could feel my sinuses again when I was flying home later that night, so the whole deep diving thing was probably a bad idea. It also aggravated the remaining symptoms I had from my cold (mainly coughing), and I felt a lot worse again after. Oh well, we live and learn...

Thanks to Mike at Ocean Hunter for supporting the freedivers again by sponsoring the competition! Also congrats to Guy who set a new men's NZ record with a PB of 8:31, and to Ruth Griffin who has finally broken the British record for dynamics with her 134m dive. There was so much tension in the air waiting to see her white card (after yellow cards on several previous attempts).

statics

2008-11-16T21:49:00.001+13:00

Check out the flash new NZ static record. Very pleased. I'll write about it soon - too tired just now.

two days to competition

2008-11-12T20:22:00.003+13:00

Well, I've had a few comments that it's been all very quiet from me lately, which is true. I was just powering up my training, but got sick two weeks ago, and while I feel a lot better, I've not recovered. My sinuses are pretty blocked up and I've got a bit of a barking cough, so I'm trying to do very little until I come right, or the competition, whichever comes first. I don't know if it'll make a difference to my static or not - a break can sometimes help and we all know that statics are mainly mind over matter, so as long as I can deal with the pain the breath-hold should be OK. I just hope my chest doesn't feel really tight after a break from all that packing and stretching. I have been working on getting enough sleep (rather unsucessfully) and eating the right stuff.

Depth won't matter as with the 50m limit it's impossible for me to improve on my depth achievements from this year. I've done one deep dive this season: 43m was as deep as the rope would allow me to go and it was one of the most relaxed dives I've ever done despite being all over the place. I think without warming up my ears and sinuses should be OK for the one dive, but we'll see on the day.

coming out of a break

2008-10-09T22:14:00.003+13:00

Well, it's been a while. I've had quite a nice break, eating and drinking too much as you do. Focus has been low as I've had a lot of other things going on, but I'm getting it back now that the next competition has been announced for mid-November in Auckland. My main focus will be on statics there as I haven't done a static in competition for so long and my record is getting pretty old.

I have been playing around with my new fin too. I've been trying to glide longer as I find this more relaxing (and I'm generally pretty lazy in dynamics). During a few tests the other night in a 33m pool I went from 8 kicks per length (I include the kick off the wall) to 6 with a longer glide. The timing went from 28s up to 30s, so I feel the benefits might be quite good. I have yet to try a max swim gliding like this. My next goal will be to try not to lose so much power or gain kicks per length throughout the dive.

statics

2008-09-10T22:17:00.004+12:00

It's been a while since I've posted and since then I've been through some rather large lifestyle changes to say the least.

My new goal is to do a good static and stretch out my static record from two years ago. I haven't done a static in competition this year, but have done a few dives now past the 7 min mark. All my dives are done without warm ups now. I'm currently working on two areas: the first is pushing out the time until the first contraction and the second is dealing with contractions.

My best time to first contraction is 3:55 and it's often above 3:40 these days. I'd like to get it regularly past 4 mins as I know this will reduce a little in competition.

I used to be really strong and push through really tough contractions but I don't seem to have the staying power any more - perhaps because my times are so much bigger, but I'd to get that staying power back - might do some brutal CO2 sessions, eg 10x passive breath holds (only exhale & inhale in between). I was doing these on full inhales but the CO2 head ache came before the contractions and they're much easier now than I remember.

Generally when I do statics I try to completely clear my head of all thoughts pre-contractions, which I find easier if there's music in the background. Last night I was a bit distracted and decided to try my really old system of a song. My statics song is the rainbow connection. It makes me feel calm and seems related somehow, but not too much. I do slow it down a bit from Kermit's version.

My first contraction was 3:55. I pulled out fairly early as it wasn't a great dive once the contractions started - I discovered that the blue cheese I ate a couple of hours before didn't taste too great second time around. I've also reduced my packing, so I pack about 60% in statics. This allows me more control with contraction blocking and really doesn't reduce the overall times (did my PB like this).

Wellington Winter Champs - underwater videos

2008-08-24T00:09:00.002+12:00

151m dynamic without fins (world record):

179m dynamic (NZ record and world #2):

WWC photos

2008-08-21T22:27:00.002+12:00

Coaching

2008-08-17T19:42:00.003+12:00

I'm currently considering doing some on-line freediving coaching to help fund some of my up-coming freediving goals. Let me know if you're interested and I'll go over with you my thoughts on how it will work and how much it will cost. If you don't have my email then leave a comment with your email and I just won't post it on-line.

Exciting upcoming Lazy Seal events

2008-08-17T19:32:00.003+12:00

All the following events can be found on our web site where there is lots more info if you're interested: www.lazyseal.co.nz

This Tuesday we're holding a beginner's freediving night at Freyberg Pool to try to feed on the recent publicity and get some more people involved in the sport. I do believe that we have three women coming which is pretty exciting in itself!!!

In early January we're holding a dive camp at Lake Taupo to try to get all the local divers (and hopefully some internationals) together to dive together, share knowledge and have a good time. There's no minimum or maximum standard to participate, you just need a passion for the sport (or you'll be bored silly). And, to top it all off, it's cheap.

I've put together a DVD of our competition in May: Apneists' Challenge. Let me know if you'd like to purchase one (NZ$10 + probably that much again on postage if required - all goes to the club). The footage is pretty raw but includes the montage that I put on YouTube, all the official videos, some underwater videos, photos, results, etc.

Aftermath

2008-08-17T18:20:00.005+12:00

I thought it time to summarise the events of the past week and plans for the rest of the year.

The Wellington Winter Champs kicked off on the coldest weekend of the year so far in Wellington. There was snow falling in the northern suburbs, and it just doesn't snow in Wellington. Luckily the weather didn't affect the arrival of our many officials joining us from around the world: Grant Graves our A-level judge from Los Angeles, Walter Steyn our women's judge from Canberra, Fran Rose a judge from Auckland, Gavin came up from Christchurch with his fancy camera to film us and of course a couple of competitors from Auckland.

I decided to have a go at the DNF record straight up. I always dive better on the first day after a break. I didn't expect to suffer from nerves so much and have had the great realisation that I don't normally have much at stake in competitions. Normally our competitions don't have other women in them and I just have to deal with me competing against me, which should always be the way anyway - I always get into trouble as soon as I start to worry about what other people are doing, and this was now the case as I was attempting to break someone else's world record, despite having done it so many times in training in preparation, to be sure to be able to achieve it even on a bad day and not psych myself out. The dive was generally reminiscent of doing speeches at school in my early teens when my thighs would shake uncontrollably whether I felt really nervous or not. I was a little disappointed as usually I feel nerves in my stomach, which is much better for freediving as you just have a lot of toilet visits prior, the odd vomit (it's only happened once) and then go and just get over it, but when it's in your legs there's not a lot you can do about it. My pulse rate was also quite a lot higher than usual. I've decided to try to simulate highly stressful situations at training. I have been trying to not worry too much about things, for example I'll finish my conversation and just take a breath and go but maybe this is too relaxed, maybe I can start to think about doing pbs more and always film the dive and have countdowns, just to put a bit more pressure on myself. If anyone else has any great ideas on how to stress me out prior to diving please feel free to leave a comment.

My build up to a competition dive consists of:

eating something decent about 90 mins before (reduces the effects of the thigh shaking)
about 15 mins of body stretching followed by a single lung stretch, usually followed by a huge head rush
hop in the water about 10 mins before (especially important as I tend to overheat prior)
visualise dive, especially those areas I struggle with: good push offs, even, calm & relaxed strokes, keep focus, hook breath at end, etc
have all gear on and ready to go about 2 mins out
get buddy to give me a 40s call as I need to start my inhale on or slightly before 30s to ensure a full breath

I wear 4kg of lead on my neck and 4kg on my waist. This keeps me nice and level in the water through my dive. I am currently getting a bit buoyant again and will look at playing around with my buoyancy again over the next month or so to try to perfect it again.

The Orca Apex 2 is brilliant for no fins. It is a mixed thickness wetsuit with most of the buoyancy through the chest area where is it easily controlled with lead around the neck and wasit, and of course the more lead you wear the more momentum you'll have. It is smooth so really fast in the water and super flexible so no issues with holding your arms out in front. It also has a fantastic neck seal so doesn't catch water while swimming with both arms out in front.

My dynamic has plenty of room for improvement. My fin arrived a week prior to the event and is pretty great for me. Read on further in my blog for the full saga (and still no refund from Leaderfins). I have to work on not slipping sideways in it, not losing kicks per length over the course of a long swim (I added the equivalent of 1 kick per 25m over the competition dive), not losing power from my kicks (which is related to the previous comment, but also will come from getting used to wearing a fin and increasing my leg strength), learning to love the fin (rather than hate it, therefore enjoying the dive, which is my main freediving goal), and dealing with lactic (which I just don't get without fins). To do this without fins I focussed on my dive post 100m which meant a lot of long swims (but it worked), so I intend to do the same with the fin.

I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get around to doing a static in competition as I haven't done one all year in competition and I've improved so much from last year! But I'm going to keep working on this as I'm just starting to have great realisations about how to improve now. There will be one more competition in NZ this year so I'll just have to do one then. I've been quite enjoying statics lately so I'd better use this to my advantage - I tend to go through phases with them.

I'm also going to consider doing some fitness work over the next few months (underwater of course) before summer joins us. I pretty much cut this out of my schedule when I pulled everything back mid to late last year. I like to stick to just doing what I enjoy, so I'll see how it goes and not punish myself too much with it all (or get too tired).

Video of 179m DYN

2008-08-16T23:26:00.001+12:00

video of 151m DNF

2008-08-14T10:49:00.000+12:00

Competition day 4

2008-08-13T18:37:00.003+12:00

Today was day four of the Wellington Winter Champs. I sat out yesterday to have some good energy for today's dynamic in the 50m pool. It was the third time I've worn my new fin (if you don't count half an hour last night in the lounge in front of the TV). It seems to be working pretty well for me. It slipped sideways quite a bit on the first length, but I guess that's partially because I'm not used to it as yet - it seemed to come right. The dive went pretty well. I remember thinking with much dread at 75m that I still had at least 100m to go, but that's normally my worst point in a long dive. I came up at 179m, which again is slightly less than I was hoping for, but I'm happy. It's a new national record and will rank me 2nd in the world. I'll try to do a bit of work with my fin before the next competition to really see where I can go with it.

Wellington Winter Champs media

2008-08-11T20:22:00.007+12:00

If you click on the article you should be able to read it. This was in the Dominion Post today.

This is my first news item, as shown on TV1's One news at mid-day today (lucky to get anything due to all the news at the moment - Olympics and the like).

Wellington Winter Champs day two

2008-08-10T19:42:00.003+12:00

I slept slightly better last night and my body again felt great but nerves got the better of me. It wasn't quite as bad as yesterday but my legs were definitely shaking throughout most of the dive, and I never do as well on the second day. I came up at 141m and held it together (the judges were about to get the safety to grab me) but I pulled out the surface protocol in 6s, so it was definitely all OK.

(next day) Hmm, just watched the video and noticed that I got the surface protocol out before the shaking started... It was a little close.

My first world record

2008-08-09T21:27:00.003+12:00

Today AIDA International officiated their 200th world record: my 151m dynamic without fins. The dive time was 2:48s and it was one of the worst dives I've done in a long time, but I made it!!! The previous world record was 149m held by Nathalia Molchanova from Russia. She held all six of the freediving competition world records so it's nice to give her a little competition in the pool for the first time in a few years. :)

I have spent the last week suffering from the most nerves I've ever had pre-competition. I managed to control it OK with positive thoughts but have lost sleep and my heart rate was pretty high before competing. I guess I've had worse in the past when I've thrown up prior to diving, but this time it was more extended. My legs shook through the entire dive and it was truely aweful. I'm going to try again for a little more tomorrow in the hope that the nerves subside since I've already set the world record and tomorrow's attempt is solely for me and will hopefully feel a lot better and make me feel a little more like celebrating a great dive.

monofin saga drawing to a slow close

2008-08-07T21:23:00.003+12:00

I thought I'd better update you guys on the lastest on the monofin saga. Here's where we're at:

Leaderfins three was returned to the NZ rep about three weeks ago and I still haven't got a refund, not that I'd expect them to do anything in a hurry.

Mon 14 July I contacted Max at Triton and he said he could make a fin to specs required (which Leaderfins didn't manage), send it well packaged and get it here before our competition. I must say I was a little sceptical but he seemed really friendly and onto it.

Thurs 17 July I transfered the money for the fin and Max got to work on it.

Mon 28 July the fin was posted.

Tues 5 August, just under three weeks after I'd ordered it my new fin arrived and I'm pleased to say it was fantastically packaged in a wooden crate-like frame.

My requests to Max were that the fin was more neutral than buoyant, good glide angle, side rails and good packaging. While the fin still floats up from the bottom of the 2m deep pool it is a great level of reduced bouyancy for me and I no longer have that huge uncomfortable arch through my back. I can even wear the same amount of weight as with no fins which is great (had to add 2kg with leaderfins). It roughly one more kick per length I think (haven't tried it in the 25m pool to really figure this out as yet) but it's a lot more comfortable so should that should balance it up. The fin seems to bend in all the right places (not through footpockets) so I'm pretty happy. It does create pretty intense pain after about 10 minutes of use but I figure that's normal for a new fin and apart from a little pressure on my left big toe the fit is firm but fairly even. It feels a little stiffer than expected, probably a bit closer to a medium rather than soft fin, but not too much of an effort to move. I guess the real test will be when I do a max attempt, which will be at some time during the competition starting this weekend.

Wellington's new marine reserve

2008-08-03T19:52:00.002+12:00

The much discussed new marine reserve along Wellington's south coast is set to be openned by the end of this month! It covers just a small area of the south coast leaving plenty of spots for us to collect paua and crayfish. This part of the south coast is pretty dead from much fishing and diving so I think it'll be great to provide an area where the fish life can replenish.

fundraising and donations

2008-07-30T20:37:00.002+12:00

We (the Lazy Seals) held a fundraiser on Sunday evening to try to raise a little cash to cover some of the costs of the upcoming Wellington Winter Champs and to take a little of the burden of making up the shortfall of flying in judges from abroad off Dave and I personally. We held a screening of the new Batman film: The Dark Knight at the Empire Cinema in Island Bay - it's one of those boutique cinemas that has couches and you can take your wine or coffee in with you. We rallied amongst our friends and families and encouraged (or guilt tripped) them into supporting us by coming along. The evening was a sucess and we made about $500 towards the competition costs. I'd just like to thank everyone who did venture out on an atrociously stormy night to support us. Thank you for your generousity and I hope you enjoyed the film and the birthday cake!

I'd also like to thank the family and friends who have offered me donations towards this competition. The support has been quite overwhelming! I hope to make you all proud. Can't wait!

DYN from under water

2008-07-27T09:11:00.003+12:00

As you can probably see from these two videos there is still much work to do. Here's what I'm working on:

consistant number of kicks per length, which means keeping the power up, more kicks seems to add a lot of time per length time too.
not arching through my back (the fin that's on it's way is meant to be more neutral in the water as I'm so buoyant I don't need a floating fin).
not moving my hands up and down so much - this should also be resolved by a more neutral fin
trying to get more out of my abs and less from my legs - however I do seem to resolve this once the lactic builds up in my legs
consistantly achieving more with a fin than without (sadly I've only done 2 dives with a mono that are longer than my DNF PB)
positive outlook on wearing a fin

Dynamic video

2008-07-24T08:17:00.000+12:00

PBs

2008-07-19T15:24:00.003+12:00

Three weeks until the competition. Today I did another PB. They seem to be coming every one to two weeks at the moment, which is nice. The jumps in DNF are not as large as they have been in the past but it's nice to see that I'm still gently progressing and that I still have not reached any kind of limit. As for DYN, I expect/hope to make some big jumps in that over the next few months as I sort out technique and equipment woes.

The removal of any warms up (except stretching) has meant that I am incredibly alert throughout the entire dive. I've been really focussing on ensuring that my technique is not altered as the dive progresses - I actually coach myself through the entire dive reminding myself that the difficult patch early on is just before the dive reflex has really kicked in, that I don't need to have contractions, that I do need to do good turns and push-offs, and to keep a nice easy relaxed pace with full power strokes so nothing is wasted. I still lose a little power during the dive but in DNF now I'm starting with 2.5 strokes per length and ending with 3, which seems to be much more acceptible than the 5 or so strokes per length that I used to do after 100m. I'm also much more relaxed throughout the entire dive due to doing so many max attempts as I trust myself more and am more consistant.

I may have brought this up before but the evening before most of my best dives I eat a good meal of steak (or other red meat), lots of veges and a glass or two of red wine. It doesn't seem to be quite as good without the red wine. I'd quite like to see if anyone else has tried this and whether or not it works for them. I know Phil is eating a lot of red meat these days and it's helping him reduce fatigue, etc. It's a fabulous excuse to eat meat and have a wine, especially after a few years of not drinking at all in the three weeks prior to competing. I'm not entirely sure that the wine has to be red either but a nice Kiwi Pinot Noir would be my wine of choice, especially next to a beef steak or some venison. I also drink huge amounts of water.

Monofin saga fin four or five

2008-07-17T20:48:00.002+12:00

Well, after much agony over fins Leaderfins decided to offer me a refund so now after nine months of waiting I'm back to square one with no fin, or just the old black one. Kerian has kindly offered to loan me his constant weight fin to use for the moment so I hopefully can keep on progressing. I've ordered a hyperfin from Triton. The service was great and Max reckons he can have it in NZ within three weeks, which means I'll have it before the competition. I did have to spend a bit more to get it couriered, but I think it's worth it if only for my general sanity. He's promised to package it very well. I'll keep you updated as to how it all goes.

Dolphin diving

2008-07-12T17:53:00.004+12:00

Today I had my first attempt at a long dynamic in the monofin on since the last competition. I'm pleased to say that I did not surface due to the discomfort in my abdominals, which is the first noticable improvement. My technique has improved a lot however there is still alot of work to do. My turns were good, but I lost focus on keeping myself nicely level in the water as I was thinking too much about the dive and the overall technique is still not natural. I ended up adding about one extra kick per length. I set a new personal best of 186m in the 25m pool, and feel there is more to come. It's school holidays and we'd attracted quite a crowd of children due to the monofins and my safety was filming me so I didn't want to overdo anything. I was quite tired (work, endless freediving admin and dealing with the fin saga is getting to me a bit), a little dyhydrated and did not quite feel like I was at the end yet. I finally got some good lactic in my legs, but it wasn't so much that I couldn't go on, it was probably more becuase I was kicking with my legs too much and not enough with my abs. I should also mention that Chris had just done PB of 180m and I couldn't let him hold a PB bigger than mine for too long! Sorry Chris, beaten by a girl again... :) I'm also feeling a bit disheartened by the fin saga which I really notice when I put it on. I'd still much rather dive without fins. I'll try to sort out a video soon.

Film fundraiser

2008-07-12T17:34:00.003+12:00

On 27 July we're doing a film fundraiser of the new Batman film in Wellington to try to raise money for the Wellington Winter Champs. The competition is fairly expensive as we've had to fly Grant over from the USA for it. Please click on the image above for more details. Hope you can make it!

Wellington Winter Champs

2008-07-05T22:33:00.002+12:00

The competition is sorted. Info and entry forms should be up on LSFC website under notices tomorrow: http://www.lazyseal.co.nz/

The on-going monfin saga

2008-07-05T22:05:00.002+12:00

In October 2007 I ordered a Leaderfins hyper pro to replace my old Specialfins dolphin carbon, that had never really worked for me as it was really too hard despite being a soft blade. In early December they promised it was in the post and I was hoping to receive it before Christmas. In early February it arrived but the date on the postal reciept was just days before Christmas. The corner was broken off. I asked for a replacement as it was poorly packaged. It also had a fingerprint on it that looked like a blood stain. In early April the replacement arrived but nothing was done to remedy the packaging problem and fin #2 was worse off than fin #1 with a good 2cm crack perpendicular to the blade end in the centre. We sent the fin back with the expectation of a replacement. They said that they had someone else to take this fin and were making me a replacement. On Thursday fin #3 arrived. It was sent air frieght to avoid sitting in transit too long. It was packaged better, although I don't think they get the concept of bubble wrap and the fact that cling film really has no impact resistance whatsoever. It was not broken but was fin #2 in disguise. They did a few things to try to make it look different. They removed the sticker and replaced it with a different one. I estimate that they cut about 5cm off the bottom of the fin. It looks absolutely miniscule. They stuck rails on the edges, top and bottom (they needed to put them on the bottom too as they extend well past the end of the fin blade). The cut goes halfway through the wave pattern of the fibreglass so I'm not convinced that the laminations will stay together. The footpockets are longer than the fin blade. They also waited the usual three months to send it. I've heard that shorter fins might be good if you're someone who swims fast with hard kicks - doesn't sound like me at all. My advice would be to boycott leaderfins. Maybe try these new Triton guys - they seem to be giving good service and have figured out how to package them safely. If I'm really lucky a year after ordering I might get a complete monofin - then I can start the search for a constant weight fin... I just want to be able to dive in equipment I can trust and by being sent fins like this it shows that the manufacturer really doesn't care too much about quality.

Learning to be a dolphin

2008-06-29T17:44:00.003+12:00

I've had three dynamics technique sessions over the past week and can see some pretty good improvements already. I'm starting to get more of a dolphin-like kick rather than the sideways eel bending that I've been battling with for a while now. I haven't attempted a long swim yet so I don't really know if I'm still stretching myself through my abdomen to a point where I can't go on. I'll probably give that a go in a week or two once it starts to feel more natural. I've also reduced to only 5 kicks per length (25m) including the push off. It was 6-8 kicks when I was gliding with my fin and hands up too high so it was obviously reducing my streamlining a lot! My turns still need work. When it works and I've got a bit of momentum up it's really good and comfortable, but if I lose concentration and slow down or lift my head up I hit the bottom with my knees an then it's hard to get moving again. I've got two more weeks to see if I can work out my hate relationship with the monofin before I either decide to give it a real go at the next comp of leave it for a while. We will have one comp day in a 50m pool, so I'll be giving it a go then anyway, ready or not...

Next competition

2008-06-23T21:54:00.002+12:00

Wellington Winter Champs, 9-13 August 2008. Pools and judges will be finalised this week and the competition announced. We have Grant coming so there will be an opportunity to break world records. Let me know if you want to participate and you're not on the Lazy Seal Freediving Club mailing list. All welcome!

Update

2008-06-23T21:13:00.003+12:00

This is my 101st blog post - feeling a little greedy on the internet space usage... :) Hope you're not too bored with my ramblings.

The latest is that I'm not allowed to compete at the world champs in Egypt since I do not have a team. I would require another NZ woman to attend and want to get in the water, plus pay their own entry etc. I'm coming to terms with it now and I'm sure that I'll make up for the lost trip next year when I can focus on my best events.

After getting really annoyed with the rather uncomfortable sensations I experience when wearing my monofin and the fact that I'm not going to Egypt, I vowed a few weeks ago to not wear it for a while - I kind of want to beat what I've done with the fin without fins. But, after some time off from it I've decided to really work on fixing up my crappy technique over the next few weeks to see what I can achieve for the next competition. Besides, the fin (attempt three) that I ordered from Leaderfins in October last year is due to arrive in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully there will be a little bubble wrap in the box this time and no great cracks through the blade. I've been using the first broken one on and off since it arrived (such enthusiasm) - we cut the corners off. Just as a note I haven't caught up without fins yet! I'll be working on trying not to arch my back so much, which stretches me through my chest and causes pretty enormous discomfort when fully packed and is the main reason that I abort dives (something that I really try not to do at all). I think part of the problem is that I'm so buoyant so my legs come up and then I over compensate with my arms and end up like a big U. Not mention that it's just not as natural a feeling or as easy as the no fins. :( There are no gravity/overcoming buoyancy issues with dynamics without fins. I also get quite tired when I have to fully pack for all technique dives - this is pretty important as I'm really comfortable when not fully packed but can't go anywhere near as far, it's quite a different experience. Maybe it's a matter of finding the happy medium. I'd quite like to crack the 200m (with a mono of course - trying to make this clearer after previous mis-interpretations, though DNF would be fab but give me a year or two for that one). I feel that I should be able to add about 10m going to a 50m pool (169 NZ record and 176m PB were done in 25m pool) due to my fairly poor turning skills, so then I only have to add about 10% to get to the end, which is just sticking with it through the discomfort and slightly improving technique - haven't really had any great issues with lactic as yet, maybe that's something I'll discover over the next 25m... With a bit of luck I'll learn to really enjoy having my feet tied together with a big fin. Wish me luck!

Sponsorship

2008-06-17T22:08:00.004+12:00

Sealord has kindly given me some tinned tuna. I'm currently trying to think up some cunning ways to turn the product into cash ...

Thanks for the support Sealord!

http://www.sealord.co.nz /

video editing

2008-06-13T20:15:00.002+12:00

I just had my first play with the video editing software that I just found on my computer. Check out the results.

The big blue OK has finally been captured...

2008-06-11T20:47:00.000+12:00

links to more articles

2008-06-06T10:02:00.001+12:00

Sara-Lise did a profile of me for Deeper Blue:

http://www.deeperblue.net/article.php/836/21

I should also mention the other one on Deeper Blue from the Vertical Blue competition (sorry for not posting this earlier Peter!):

http://www.deeperblue.net/article.php/833/2

Video of 150m DNF

2008-06-04T22:36:00.003+12:00

I have to apologise about the quality - I think I reduced it too much... :( Still was pretty large to upload.

Link to website for Egypt team World Champs 2008

2008-06-02T15:44:00.002+12:00

http://www.sharmfreedivingworldchampionship.com/

media

2008-05-31T16:07:00.002+12:00

This was in a weekly Palmy paper: