Sniff...

Back in Sharm, I was faced with some of the wildest weather I have seen here so far. A storm that lasted several days smashed the jetty to pieces and tore the 150m long mooring line that anchors our platforms to the reef, seeing me and Freediving World staff Sergio paddling around in the waves, trying to stop the platforms from floating away over night. It was pretty hard work, and a different kind of training all together!

In the middle of all this, a filmcrew arrived to shoot a video of me freediving - of course! Who needs good weather for filming, anyway. When it was finally ok to get in the water, I went for a 100m dive and surprised myself as well as my coach by reaching the bottom with constant pressure in the ears and air in my mouth to equalize further - better than ever before! I was convinced that equalization problems were now a thing of the past and looking forward to lots of beautiful dives to 100+ meters.

Then again, things never go quite as planned, and what followed were three days with five to six hours in the water for the filmcrew, making me so tired I forgot how to be a freediver when it was time to train again properly. After some sessions getting stuck in various depths, it was time to take a break and get some rest. True to the tone of the training period so far, the weather chose to be stunning while I was out of the water, blasting us again with awful conditions as soon as I wanted to get back in. Feeling strong and ready to dive, I found myself landbased looking at the angry sea for four days! I even agreed with evil coach and got in the pool to train dynamics quite happily, with some nice long dives - adaptation and strength were all good, but that's only part of what you need for a world record in variable weight.

As soon as the weather improved we jumped in and I even got to do a beautiful 90m variable dive, sprinting back with no problems at all, before it all went wrong again for another week. With only ten days to go till the start of my attempt, no sign of improvement on the wind-and-waves front and considering the amount of rest I would need from the deep training dives, we have decided that we simply do not have enough days left to have a safe progression and that we have to cancel the attempt.

Of course, this is completely the right thing to do and the only way to deal with the situation. Nevertheless, it is really frustrating and hard for me - I absolutely HATE to quit!

I want to go snowboarding. When the weather is bad in the mountains, we simply go and drink coffee or Coronas!

Booooooohooooooo....

Mid-training

It took three weeks to finally be well enough to get in the water. Evil coach, bored with his sniffling athlete, went off on HOLIDAY - shocking - and left me all alone with his new member of staff, Sergio. Left to test our (well - my) silly ideas, we went right ahead and destroyed ourselves so thoroughly with the TRX, we were both unable to walk for four days, with the stairs to our favorite coffee place becoming a major hurdle.  I added sprint intervals on the spinning bike and monofin swimming in the pool, and started to feel nicely tired instead of grumpy, restless and miserable.

This was followed by decent constant weight training when I was finally able to clear my sinuses. The time for a gentle start was past, so I jumped straight to repetitions, with dives up to 65m, 55m, 45m and 35m in one session burning whatever energy I had left after the TRX. It was beautiful to see the ocean and Luda Barracuda again, even if Murphy's law has provided the worst weather - as soon as I get in, a gale starts blowing and massive waves come up, leaving me banging my head into the platform while trying to relax, and as soon as I get out, it all stops! At least it's making my training extra efficient: nothing much will shock me any more. Think positive!

In week three I headed to Hurghada, to spend two days with SSI International Training Direktor Ronny the Kaiser Kain at his Instructor Trainer Seminar - the idea being that it is important to meet and share our knowledge ever so often. At least that was my excuse, while the true plan involved drinking a couple of beers and hanging out with people who know nothing about noseclips, monofins, mouthfills or similar.

I arrived in time to give the ten guys a tiny introduction into freediving - strangely, they all listened attentively and then proceeded to drop at my feet! It was not me, I promise, I was nice to them! I believe there was a sense of nervousness around regarding the dynamic required to pass the course, so they were all up for testing a few minutes of freediving breahting skills - anything to give them an extra couple of meters, I guess! Of course, watched over by me and Ronny they all did their swims easily enough, in a wide range of unorthodox styles - we'll fix that next time, guys!

Now I'm back in Sharm, and it's time to work equalization and see if the reef in 100+ meters ist still the same.

Can't wait!

New season

Since diving went kind of well in November and I still had thoughts of my interrupted world record attempt lingering in my head, I went for a radical new approach this year: I have quit the snowboarding season (painful!) and was going to replace it with all out, full on freediving training, losing the Christmas kilos in January, ready for the depth in Sharm come February.

Needless to say, this did no go as planned. The nasty bugs got me on the first day of the new year and I spent two weeks sniffling on the sofa. To make up for lost time, I hit the gym with a vengeance as soon as I felt better, with pooltraining, sprint intervals on the bike, weights and streching every day. It was wonderful and fun. It lasted ten days, then I added a day at the dive show into the mix and headed straight back to the sofa with the flu.

Even my favorite diving doctor, who had threatened to put me back on the bike to see how unfit I got over Christmas, was having none of it when I turned up with my sports bag. How upsetting! All those last minute sprint intervals for nothing! I batted my eyelashes at him and moaned a bit, and I do believe I got him to consider testing me after all, but his medical good sense kept the upper hand and he would not let me near the evil bike machine. Phew!

Then again. I might whine and complain, but in the end it's kind of funky to find out how strong you are - or not... in any case, we just did the regular lung stuff, which held no surprises: my lungvolume is still nice and small. Evil doctor confirmed that I may go and dive, once the flu is gone, and that he still has no idea how or why it is possible for me to get down there.

I thought about postponing the trip, since the bugs showed no sign of leaving me alone, but evil doctor and I both thought the lovely, warmer climate of Sharm El Sheikh would speed the recovery.

I have rarely been more wrong. It is FREEZING and I am still sick!

Aaaaaargh.....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

Patience. Patience. Ohhhhmmmmmmmmmmm.......sniff.

Winter training

Winter was approaching fast, and with visions of endless paper bags to stamp and gifts to wrap during the Christmas-Bookshop-Madness, I escaped for a last dose of freediving in November. Three weeks! I even had a terribly clever plan: I was going to be on a freediving HOLIDAY! No records, no stress, just enjoying the blue, as my angel coach Marco would say.

 

Well. On day two, I woke up at FIVE in the morning, to be in the water at six! The sunrise at the center is spectacular, and the water was still warm, so I kind of enjoyed this, thinking: brilliant, training will be done by 8am, then: holiday.  Somehow, though, evil coach was not in tune with my plans - getting up at five simply meant more training could be fit into the day.

 

To make things even more efficient, evil coach had me train tandem with his new pet project, Max Musella, an Italian Apnea Academy Instructor, who is naturally also charming and handsome (see above) and did his best to look after me on all our dives, since I made him be the driver - having quickly discovered the beauty of this set up: evil coach had someone else to tell off! Sometimes, it was not me who hit the break, so I was then able to pretend that everything on my dive had been just perfect, leaving Max to face the music. Wonderful! The diving was excellent, and very good training – on one occasion, I even focused and reached 80m head down, mask equalized, no packing, still with some air left to equalize deeper. Success!

Since there have been lots of discussions about no limits diving and it appears likely that Aida Germany will follow the Aida International trend and not accept no limits records any more, I partially came out of the holiday zone on the last day and set a German no limits record with 110m. It took me three training dives to reach that depth properly, meaning my coach was underwhelmed and finally had a bit of a talk with me – along the lines of: get your brain out of vacation – and I arrived at 110m with air to spare, which was rather fun. Here's little video:

Now I have bags to stamp and customers to scare off. I have firm plans to avoid getting fat and unfit over Christmas, which will come to nothing, as every year, so I’ll have some explaining to do when I get back to my coach at the end of January. Suggestions for good excuses are welcome!

Hmmm...I am forced to exist on a diet of chocolate and coffee during the Christmas season because – because - it’s the only food they sell near the bookshop in December.

Honest!

 

TV star! Hurrah!

First things first: my mum is much better, she came out of the clinic a few days ago and is already tidying up the rubbish from the street outside the bookshop if I turn my back on her for a second, so thanks everyone for all the good wishes!

In the meantime, I have been terribly well behaved and spent endless hours in the bookshop, trying not to scare away too many of the customers. I was just about to forget that I am a freediver, when I got an invitation to come onto "Sport and Talk from Hangar 7" a talkshow on Austrian TV channel Servus TV. The guy in charge is clearly a man who knows how to sweet-talk a potential visitor - after enticing me with the promise of funky fellow guests such as extreme climber Thomas Huber and old school adventurer Rüdiger Nehberg, he delivered the final blow with outrageous flattery! Having been complimented on my looks, cleverness and, not to forget, heaps of charm, I couldn't help believing the hype and agreed to provide the female element in a chat about extreme sports with a bunch of alpha males.

I was instantly struck by a new problem: TV outfit anxiety! What on earth does one wear to such a thing? Sporty yet smart? Sporty yet sexy? Full on outrageous glamour? A great excuse to spend hours on London's Kings Road, where I was quite distracted by the current trend for extremely high heeled shoes, meaning that the TV outfit project fell by the wayside - and no, those shoes are not appropriate sports talk attire - and I ended up forced to dig through my wardrobe instead. Boring, I know.

Arriving at hangar seven in the evening, I realized that I was in man-heaven! This is lost on the likes of me, but the place is full of every driveable or flyable man-toy on the planet, including formula one cars, helicopters and aeroplanes! I'm surprised any of the male guests were at all able to concentrate. The crew were in good spirits, with a down to earth approach to the guests/stories - I had the first ever stylist who did not try to give me some sort of bizarre TV hairdo, which was refreshing to say the least. The last time a crazed Cruella-Deville-type (in her sixties) make-up artist produced random ringlets sticking out in a weird manner from my head, and for the first time in my (very minor and limited) TV career I let out the diva and promptly went on sporting a pony tail, which I have adopted as my TV-hairdo-avoidance-strategy for the future. This time, I was allowed to look like myself though, which was a pleasure!

I have no idea what I did/said in the show, only that I got out of the proposed breath-hold competition between myself and some hapless members of the audience by forgetting to bring along my noseclips. Since I most likely would have performed an embarassing static of 27seconds, this turned out to be a good thing and I have been able to keep up the appearance of being vaguely talented at freediving. Phew!

Drinks afterwards lasted until 2am, my alarm went off at 04:50, and I arrived back in Berlin in a daze. Having unpacked my suitcase, I have now realized that I have not the smallest idea where the noseclips may be. I did put them in a bag, ready to be used on telly, and then...well....

?????????

They are gone. I guess it means I can't go pool training! Hurrah!

Restless

Having rushed back to Berlin from Sharm, I found my mum in intensive care, which was not fun at all. Any freediving was instantly out of the question, and the world record attempt in variable weight I had announced for the beginning of October is suddenly a long way off.  Although my mum is getting much better, it will take her time to be fully recovered and traveling far away does not feel like a good idea over the next few months, meaning I have bailed out of Vertical Blue, too – seems like I am simply not meant to make it to the Bahamas!

While my mum is having fun exercising in the clinic all day every day, I am twiddling my thumbs and feeling restless. What to do with all that focused world-record-energy? I was so desperate to fill the void, I started to go pool training - imagine! Me! In the pool! Coach Martin, who kicked me into shape for the 2009 indoor world championships, is laid up with a bad back, so coach and training partner Elisabeth had to step in to help out. She was always the sweet one, and she still is, only she said to me the other day, when I was feeling especially awful and unmotivated: “I had a nasty CO2 table planned for you, but I would accept a long dynamic instead – that might be less painful over all…”  Lovely! I was thinking more along the lines of: let’s quit this nonsense, and have some coffee!

With no daily regime of breathing, stretching and training to keep me in check, there was nothing to stop me from going out to have my nails painted in the brightest pink available, which had my male friends recoil with horror, claiming I had blinded them, and my female friends shrieking with delight, which just goes to prove that most of the time a girl dresses for the other girls – sorry, boys!

None of this quite serves to get my restless mind off the fact that freediving seems far away. It’s hard to just drop something you have focused on so long. Sniff.

Then again, I believe it may be snowboarding season soon - which means I get to drink lots of beer! Hurrah!