Two new records in one day. What? How? What happened?

It has been a strange day. Linda would be pleased to hear that I am lost for words, which must mean that her “cut down on talking time” program is working, as was kind of proven this morning in static. Johan arrived to coach and spotted me right away sitting on my towel in a far corner of the pool. “You look terrified” were his exact words, which summed up the situation pretty accurately. I guess I was tired of being stressed, so when it was time to hold my breath, I relinquished all responsibility to Johan and simply trusted him to take good care of me. This meant that I was ready to just listen to whatever he said, so I relaxed again at around five minutes instead of fighting the dive. Somehow I heard him say something about six minutes, and he got me up at the perfect time with a pb, a ninth place over all, and a new German record (old one was 6:07) of 6:12.


This used to be the one I thought was unbeatable. All it took were two great coaches! Thank you so much, Jesper and Johan. I am definitely blaming this one you guys.

Done with static, Elisabeth and I went out in search for food, where we ate as much pasta as we could possibly fit in, hoping to get energy for the dynamic qualifying some seven hours later. Elisabeth was up first, and proved that our training had been working by going all out to do very clean dive of more than 170m. She was back in time to help calm down my nerves, and when I pushed off the wall I felt strong and ready for a good performance. I was just swimming along happily when (don’t ask me how) my googles and my noseclip came off at the 100m turn and were dangling around my neck. It took me a second to work out why there was water up my nose and I could not see anything. Then I thought, oh no, I have to come up early, then I thought, no way, I am swimming to the end. The interesting bit was turning at 150m not being able to see the wall, and although I still felt good I decided to be safe and came up with a new German record of 154m.

This has put me into the B-final. I am planning to keep my goggles on and see what that will feel like. Whish me luck!