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!