Anna von Boetticher

New year - again!

2012-01-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

How does this happen? Why? Why? It was new year only yesterday, I am sure of it! I am also sure that I did write a blogpost somewhere in between October and Christmas, but apparently, it has gone and hidden itself.

I suppose the same might be said for my powers of freediving. Not that that would take anyone by surprise, least of all, me! I was overwhelmed by the onslaught of the common CC - also know as Christmas Customer - at least that's my excuse for not training and going on a steady regime of choclate and biscuits instead. I might have set a national record in giftwrapping, though - a friend asked me, quiet seriously, if there wasn't a giftwrapping machine? Well here's the news: there is! She's called Anna!

In any case, while I stayed dry, my mobile phone went freediving in a jug of water some time ago, therefore leaving the door wide open for the final attack of my (very manlike in this matter) friend Falk, who somehow talked me into getting i-d up. I have now joined the club of sorry people who slide their fingers across touchscreens, although I still feel kind of embarrassed about this and tend to bury the thing at the bottom of my bag. I will, however, confess to buying my first "app" (hideous term!), and no, it is nothing to do with shoes! It is - sigh - "iholdbreath". Now. There is something distinctly weird going on in my psyche. Somehow, the stopwatch that I have kept on my bedside table for over six months now has completely failed to entice me to do a single one of the CO2 tables I had planned on. I cannot do it, I cannot, I cannot....but: if the i-thingy tells me to hold my breath, dry - urgh - in the morning - urgh - I get right to it! Amazing! It speaks with a man's voice. I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

SSI Dive Trophy Madness

2011-10-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

Ronny Kaiser Kain conviced me to do it again: join the madness that the guys in Wendelstein disguise as the SSI Dive Trophy semi final in Siegburg. I was the surprise guest, although maybe not such a surprise, since the only video online from last years' event is me demonstrating the freediving challenge. I had a sneaky feeling all the candidates have been secretly practising.

Since around thirty of the mad people made my - clever and difficult, or so I thought - freedive challenge last year, I was a at a loss as to how to make it harder this time round. The problem is: they don't care what happens to them, as long as they get a point for it! Seriously. It is amazing. If you ever had a student who can't equalize, send him to the dive trophy, and he'll be down and up in record time.

We went for simplicity in the end, and just had people dive as deep as they could, 20m being the bottom of the tank. Four of them did it in the first fifteen minutes, all sprinting, in all kinds of unorthodox styles, but touching down nonetheless. I was having visions of lots of twenty meter dives in my imediate future, but some of the candidates had mercy on me and stopped before the 15m mark. All in all, I was impressed by the level and what is possible with a little motivation, and am looking forward to seeing the top ten at the Dive Trophy Final at the Soma Bay Dive Week. This happens at the Robinson Club first week of December, and I'll be around teaching workshops and having fun, so join me if you like!

I got out of the water after only 57 dives and had to rush off to the airport. This is clearly a mistake! A promise to stay around for the beers next year had two candidates announce that in that case, they would make sure to be back. Oops - not quite the message I meant to send about freediving...

Since it is too late now, you may as well come for the Dive Trophy madness extravaganza 2012. Start collecting those points and have a drink with a freediver, who is, as of now, ON HOLIDAY!!!!

Well. At least from training.

Water/Wo/Men Event

2011-10-07T04:36:00.000-07:00

Having contained the suitcase explosion, I set off to the stunning Six Senses Lamuu (Maldives) resort, to join the first water/wo/men event. An hour after arrival, we gathered at the jungle cinema to introduce ourselves to the other water people. This was an intimidating experience. Everyone was either some kind of impressive action sport hero, or impressive conservationist, or both, with the odd rockstar thrown in for good measure. And then there was me - just a freediver who is rubbish at static! I left with a sense of slight worry, wondering what possessed the organizers when they invited me. See the jungle cinema below, photo taken from Grace Deliver's album:

After a stunning cocktail party on a sandbank, surrounded by funky people looking beautiful, we were shown the new windsurfing movie, starring guys like Levi Siver, Jake Miller and Keith Teboul. I was well impressed, if not to say blown away. Whatever happend to the windsurfing I remember, that simply involved some (albeit handsome) guys zooming across the water at top speed? Now it appears to all be about flying 20m up into the air, perfoming insane stunts, while waves that can only be called monstrous are coming up to get you. These guys are NUTS! See video below for evidence.

I woke the next morning thinking: this will be interesting. My job was to teach a static session, for which a whole lot of the crazy people turned up, including surf diva Bethany Hamilton, whose villa pool we highjacked. I was quite baffled, for they all seemed to think doing a bit of static was pretty wild, and a great experience. As usual, people have little understanding of what happens when you hold your breath, and as one of them was kind enough to push his limits for all others to see, I believe I managed to get the point across that training underwater by yourself is not a good plan. The picture below was taken by Mariah Sievers, who held her breath in between - the girls rocked!

The rest of the stay passed in a whirl of teaching clinics, attending talks, meeting people, and trying each other's sports. I had the bright idea of doing a little stand up paddling with Keith, which quickly turned into a longish session as we made our way out to the sandbank. Having managed well enough on the way there, I was surprised to be falling off all the time on the return journey. It took my blond head a little while to process the situation: the waves were now coming from behind, secretly sneaking up to get me! That is just wrong, that is. I have no idea how anyone does this in monster waves. At least when I am snowboarding, the bumps stay put!

I cleverly had my first ever surfing lesson a couple of hours later, which involved - and I know this should have been obvious - more paddling! Noted surf coach Terry Simms had us out on a lovely small wave, which broke very shallow over a reef, and, overexcited by standing up on the first try, I managed to find (and hit) the one bit sticking up to just below the surface, thus earning the first reef cuts of my surfing career. An hour later I was unable to lift my arms, or head, but blissfully happy with it all.

Amazingly, everyone there thought freediving is nuts. Well guys, at least it is a non-contact-sport! Really. Lunatics, all of you. I had a fantastic time meeting the other watermen, and it was very interesting to see how we instantly got along with each other. It seems we think alike. On this trip, we were united in a common cause: our love of the ocean, and wish to look after it. The charities present doing great work were +H2O, Water Charity, BLUE Marine Foundation, Plant a Fish...I hope we can do more together in the future.

Oh, and: all my fears about surfing have been confirmed. It is completely, utterly, and instantly addictive.

Ohhhhh shit. Now what?

Bronze Medal party

2011-09-28T23:26:00.000-07:00

Right, well, I got distracted from writing emails, blogs, press releases and such things. It's simple: things went surprisingly well, and you can see me here with Jarmila, who took silver, celebrating easy dives with iced coffees.

First I ended the constant weight competition day, also known as day of darkness, with a very easy dive to 76m, which put me into fourth place and had me ready to go on holiday and straight to the party. A day of darkness it was, with waves high enough to roll right over my head at one minute to official top, the majority of athletes messing up their dives and judge Linda longing for her chicken card. When I surfaced, the safety divers fell into hysterics over what a beautiful dive it had been, which had me quite baffled, until I found out later that I was only the second white card after eight divers, and the first one they saw smiling.

I was very well looked after by my friend William Winram, who is of course married to Michèle (my trusted coffee companion), but she allows him to have me as a second charge, see below, which is just as well, since it appears that every time I need to do a proper dive, I am in some way broken and need Will to fix me.

After the constant weight mess, Stavros thought divers might take it a bit easier for the free immersion day, but no such thing, people were announcing PB's all over the place. My announcement devil made me put 71m into the box, which was not quite the holiday I had in mind. On the comp day Jesper found me all by myself, paddling vaguely into the direction of the warm-up zone. He read my thoughts, which were much along the line of don't want to dive, will turn early, am on holiday, but he was having none of it, gave me a bit of a talking to and put me on the line, where I proceeded to do a super easy bronze medal dive. Then it was time for the party!!! This was much fun, as usual, and as I am not at all a marketing pro, the only picture taken with my bronze medal has me and Liv waving cans of beer at the camera.

After braving the taxi strike/public transport strike/air traffic control strike/customs strike in beautiful Greece I made it home, where my suitcase somehow exploded, leaving me with just enough time to consider what to take to the water/wo/men event at Six Senses Laamu, a beautiful resort in the Maldives, where I am headed to take part in a very exciting environmental charity event. It has a long guest list full of fantastic water pro people, surfers, windsurfers, kiteboarders, etc etc, and me. I am still a bit baffled as to how they came to invite me, but I'm not arguing and who knows? I may get hooked on surfing...

Oh no. Another addiction sport! Danger!

News from the worlds

2011-09-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

Am sitting in the lobby with 150 athletes buzzing with nervous wrong announcement nerves, waiting for the startlist to come out. I tamed my devil and went conservative with 76m, which may not sound like a safe bet, but I confess I got into the secrecy game and hid my last training success. It's oddly conservative, as it is for once not a personal best in competition. I was ranging from 71m-79m - and am currently thinking: oh nooooooo! Should have done 79, should have done 79! Had I put 79m into the box, it would be: oh nooooo! What have I done? Why? Why? In any case, I can reveal that Sara has gone for 102m, 15 men have gone for 100m or more - amazing. They're all mad, they are.

Meanwhile, all training was cancelled for the last two days: after the earthquake last week, we had a storm with thunder, lightning, wind and highish seas that flooded the shops in town. Our waterworld decided to go for a swim and entered deeper waters about 500m to the right. Must have have known something about the announcements...anyway, freedivers all around were trying to find ways to pass the non-training downtime. See some examples below.

After granny-style-swimming competition held with Guillaume Nery at the hotel pool, the British team were having a tea party to celebrate victory.

A stray dog made the mistake of adopting a bunch of bored athletes, and was turned into a freediving dog instantly. It is clearly planning to go deep, as it was seen sporting an enormous neckweight and using a noseclip.

The female armwrestling night was dominated by fanny, who beat nearly everyone, except Junko from Japan. Note the intent bad-ass look on her face.

Judge Linda was rocking the Italian with a Zebra bathing suit. She remains unbeaten at the top of the stylish judge list.

Pim was so enamoured of the zebra bathing suit, he carried Linda off there and then, to talk about some lists. He said.

Will have some tea now, to calm the non existent nerves. Something is wrong here. I am not in panic mode. Might need stressing out...

World Championships: CNF comp day

2011-09-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

You might ask what a banana is doing in my wardrobe, and I suppose that is an entirely fair question. Let me explain. I have been attacked by cramps in random body parts over the last few days. Apart from the usual leg thing, I am capable of getting a cramp in the oddest places, such as the intercostal muscles in my back when taking a mouthfill. Hence I have been stocking up on bananas with the firm intention of consuming one of those with my porridge every morning. Problem is, after several deep dives, I am now also afflicted by a severe case of freediving brain, and have left the bananas behind in my room every single day. Blond girl solution: put banana next to slouchy breakfast pants, hence impossible to forget. It worked! Fred Buyle, our freediving photographer (see his images of the WC at www.nektos.net), who has been doing around ninety dives a day taking pictures, thus erasing 95% of memory storage cells from his head, now has a packet of green tea residing next to his morning shorts.

The last couple of training days before the comp were kind of weird. Saturday was simply wild, with rough conditions and 120 athletes trying to find out where exactly their limit might be. Alexey Molchanov did a good job on that one, doing an 80m no fins dive the one day and then asking for the rope to be set to 122m the next. Turns out the rope was only 121m long, which was plenty, as he went there easily but checked out in around 10m on the way up. He said he was a bit tired from the day before. No kidding! He is very strong this year and joined me today in having a coaching day, and we both shared a moment of pleasure at not having to dive.

Just when I had convinced myself that after the 70m I was done with all my training and almost on holiday, I was tricked into doing another deep dive by judge Linda, who came to share my warm up rope and then, when I wanted to go back to have coffee, said: "why don't you just go on the line and turn early". She knew perfectly well that my brain is simply not wired for early turns. I got lulled into agreeing by the lovely weather, and before I knew what happened, I touched down at 73m, swam up rather easily and celebrated with two coffees afterwards.

Opening ceremony was the usual stuff, waiting around, then waving flags, then running away as quickly as possible. I took coaching bookings and picked up Will Winram, with an announcement of 88m, finnish giant Antero Joki with 70m, no fins prodigy Jody Fisher with 56m (we will start to feed her wrong information to slow her down) favorite UK tough guy Dave Tranfield with 58m, and Ilka with 35m. This list meant I was out on the first boat and back on the last. Rest day, anyone? I had high hopes for my deepest diver Will, but when the sonar guy shouted "early turn", I had to defect there and then - I will only hang around for people who make their depth, since I cannot waste my expert services on yellow cards. Truth is, I only had a few minutes until it was Antero's turn, so sped off to distract him from nerves and rescue his neck pillow floatation device situation: the thing conveniently burst just as he reached the line, leaving me to hold his head during breathe up. Nice to be useful.

All was well, he took his time on the way down, making the judges a bit fidgety, but nothing was going to stop him from reaching the plate today. Just as he was on his way up, I got elbowed out of the way by a large man in a black wetsuit, who tried to jump past me into the competition zone, shouting: can we get on the line? Well. That's what he thought, but he had the wrong girls on this one. I grabbed his arm and yanked him back, while Linda gave him the you-are-dead-if-you-touch-my-rope look. I told him to go away, which appeared to surprise him. Duh! If a guy on the boat is shouting out depth and everyone is looking down, in a DIVING competition, is usually because someone is DIVING! Imagine! What a concept! Anyhow, he wasn't going to get past me, and Antero finished with a white card and a new Finnish record, which pleased him as much as his coach - see him below looking smug next to the enormous Finnish flag.

While I was busy looking after my charges, someone removed my bright green pool noodle from the dry area boat. I am shocked and hurt by this act of sabotage and went round the rest of afternoon, chasing people with green noodles, convinced that they must be the evil noodle kidnappers, but it has not turned up. Whoever the noodle thief is, he best be aware that bad noodle karma will follow him for the rest of his freediving days, making him mess up all of his duck dives in the future.

The safety guys felt like they had a day off - see above, wasting time soaping themselves - since most freedivers are sissys (much like me) or non swimmers (again, like me) and so don't do the no fins thing, hence there were only sixty competitors out there today. The calm will be over tomorrow, when 100 crazed athletes will head to the ropes to push their constant weight dives again, as no one knows what on earth to announce for Thursday. Psychological warfare is on everywhere, and the announcement game has started, with people hiding their depths while trying to spy on the competition. Me, I of course know everything - just a question of the right sources - so I will sell information to the highest bidder and finance my beers at the final party this way.

Tequila, anyone?

New record - moving along

2011-09-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

Right, moving along nicely - after the 50m and the 60m dive, I continued in "not-messing-about" mode and went for 70m next. Much to my surprise, I went there, only needing to equalize once before the bottom. I might not like to say this, since he has been impossible, trouble, and bossy recently, but boss-instructor Andrea Zuccari is directly responsible for this result. Thanks! But I hate you! I do! Impossible!

The hotel is packed with freedivers, doing yoga everywhere, demanding weird foods, and being generally freediving athletes. Yesterday we had official registration for the worlds, and 150 sweaty athletes stood in line to get their lanyards destroyed by judge Grant - see below. If your lanyards survives that one, it will be good for sure, believe me. Not all of them did, though, and I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and said a little prayer while mine got pulled in all directions. It held! Hurrah! Ken from Denmark had a clever business idea and set up a little lanyard fixing station in one corner of the room, so various bits were stuck together again and all was well.

We have had three days of competition: the mediterranean freediving cup, held directly before the worlds as a kind of practice run. On day two, it got well rough early on, and with 68 athletes out to dive, the dry area pedalo boats got seriously overloaded, and two of them did the titanic thing, tilting slowly and then finally heading to the abyss, with freedivers jumping off into the waves. When the poor safety crew came to the rescue and tried to tow them away, the zodiac nearly sank, too! All going well for organizer Stavros, who is existing on his diet of ham and eggs. Note the token healthy apple in the picture - must be what keeps him going...or is it the hugs he gets from all the girls? We still have not given up hope that he will let us clamber up onto his waterworld plattform/island, but he is being very hard and mean about this. Sniff.

Divers here are mostly amazingly deep, there are totally unheard of people left right and center going to 100m and more. Women are in the eighties - it's impressive and fun. People are pushing themselves, too, so there have been some black outs and the scooter rescue pioneered at Only One in Sharm is in good use for deep safety here. I hit my 70m dive in the med cup, so it is now a clean and clear new German CW record, which I am well pleased with - something is working. Sergio Martinez Alvarez took the mens German CW record with 83m, impressing the freediving community and leaving the German team proud to have such a great new depth competitor among us. More to come from that diver!

News and gossip will be up regularily over the next week. I have bailed from the no fins competition, so will be taking bookings for coaching, thus being able to see all the fun first hand. Since I am much in demand, I will only accept divers who look the part, which unfortunalety means Johan from Sweden, whom I enjoyed coaching to a Swedish record last year, is out of favour, since he is sporting a monofin with pink (!) footpockets.

Can't have that, now. I have a reputation to lose, after all.

Kalamata at last

2011-09-08T02:25:00.000-07:00

I sat around in Sharm for two whole weeks, without diving. On some days, I was allowed to come to the center and do my (now daily - it's too strange) pathetic attempts at breathing exercises there, see above. On other days, Marco simply locked me in the apartment as even the heat was giving me terrible headaches. In the evenings, I was fed lovingly by my Italians - see below an amazing amount of homemade gnocchi which we polished off in no time - but nothing was helping so by the end of week two, I was on all the drugs I could get my hands on and ready to switch sport.

A final attempt to do a dive on Saturday was thwarted by a freak current, which had me flying away horizontally with the line while I was down there doing a rather nice hang. Even Luda, the barracuda, looked surprised. I was contemplating a career in competitive knitting, but thought it might be fun to go to the worlds for the party, so I boarded the plane to Kalamata in the end. Considering my aquaintance with Murphy over the last months, getting stuck in Cairo for four hours, missing my connecting flight in Athens and having to spend hours on a bus did not come as a surprise anymore, I tell you.

First thing we had in Kalamata was a beautiful thunder storm! Waking up to catch the Zodiac taxi out to the training zone was lovely and I felt happy and had my motivation back. Stavros has built a waterworld style island for us to dive from, plus we have three dry area boats and six warm up lines in the water. The whole thing is around 1.4km out in the middle of the Messinian bay, so it really feels like you are floating around at sea, but the water is flat calm. Perfect.

More athletes are arriving by the day, and every evening we have the ritual sign up brawl. It's first come, first serve for your training slot, but since everyone comes early, it's elbows out and every man/woman for him/herself when Stavros pulls the list out of his bag. The poor man has another 100 Athletes arriving by next week, and another three weeks of this to go. I wonder if we will manage to break him this year?

I have been out to dive twice, and briefly contemplated taking it easy, especially since warm ups were ugly. But then I do not have time to waste any more, so instead of messing around I did a 50m and a 60m constant weight dive. They were not beautiful, but completely fine, and although I still get a headache for hours afterwards, at least I can equalize! I keep looking around for surprises that Murphy might have in store for me, but it appears that he has been taken over by Jodie from Australia, so I can focus on moving ahead - thanks Jodie!

Fingers crossed! Am putting the chocolate and the knitting needles away for now. Day off today, so plenty of time to get funky ideas into my head...

Go away, Murphy!

2011-08-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

I know I have been quiet for a while. I have been back home, in what can only be described as a wintery summer (note the woolly hat...). Truth is, my messed up dive had me puzzled, and I felt I needed to figure out what exactly had happened, before continuing to train. Mostly I wanted to exclude any possible physical causes that could catch me out again, and went in search of a completely improbable, magic Dr. House style person, who, as one would hope, would get all excited by the weirdness of the case presented to him, and would, after much testing, deliberating and grouchiness, come up with a wicked, unheard of explanation, all inside of a one hour episode. I know what you are thinking. I thought the same. Fat chance, and all that.

Never underestimate the ability for random hopefulness in a woman, though. We like to entertain faith in the existence of impossible things, such as the perfect pair of high heels (am close), a perfect bikini (still looking), and, even, a magic doctor. Off I went, and amazingly, found the Dr. House of Berlin: a specialist in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, sports medicine, and - it's true, I swear - diving medicine! An email describing what had happened to me raised the curiosity of Dr. (House) so much, he found time to listen to my improbable story and take a first hand look at what most people would consider to be a crazy person - a blond freediver. And no, I did not have to attach a pdf of my arcticle from the April issue of Penthouse magazine to the email, to convince him to see me! Really.

Going to visit this man was a bit of a revelation. Rarely have I encountered a doctor who listened with such attention to detail. I did not have much hope in finding out what was wrong on that day, and expected him to simply order a range of tests to check for damage from the incident and any possible causes. I described the dive to him, trying my best to include all details, such as the fact that the silicone skirt of the mask had been squeezing onto my eyes and I could not open them at the bottom. I wanted to be honest about all factors that had caused stress, however small, during the attempt. By the questions my Dr. House was NOT asking, it became clear he knew almost all there is to know about freediving. When I was done, he clarified a couple of things. Then he spoke the magic words:

I think I can tell you what went wrong.

My jaw dropped. I looked at him, stunned. I expected the hidden cameras to be revealed at any moment. He proceeded to explain to a speechless (unheard of, I know) Anna a thing called the oculocardiac reflex, which I think is well worthy of a Dr. House episode. If pressure is applied directly to the eyes, such as in my case by the squeezing mask, it causes the heartrate to drop dramatically and the bloodvessels to dilate. Just what you want in 130m! The heartrate will drop to the point of fainting, and if the pressure is kept up, it can even lead to cardiac arrest. To manage to do this to oneself on a world record dive - one might say it wasn't my lucky day.

My first reaction was disbelief, then immediate relief at having found out what exactly went wrong - fortunately an incident that does not mean I have to stop diving. Then, when I was in my car, driving home, I was hit by the inevitable "Ohhhhhh nooooooo!!!! My beautiful 130m dive!!!!"-moment. By now, I have put it down to (albeit more colourful than I wanted) experience. Berlin Dr. House has a stern and bossy streak, too, and I had a feeling he would outright forbid me to go training if he could find anything wrong, but a CT of my lungs showed all was fine, so he put his signature on a piece of paper and declared me fit to dive, shaking my hand quite firmly, clearly with thoughts along the lines of: "she's mad" and "I wonder what trouble she will get herself into next" on his mind.

With the piece of paper in my pocket, I left rainy Europe behind and flew to Sharm El Sheikh last Tuesday, ready to train for the world championships in Kalamata. This clever plan has yet again been put on hold by my friend Mr. Murphy himself, as I have managed to pick up a nasty cold on my last day in London. I had five weeks back home to be sick! It is infuriating. Today I dived to all of 37m, but the sinuses were complaining, so I got out of the water and grumbled to myself for the rest of the afternoon. Might as well eat chocolate, drink beer, and get fat.

I feel I have had my share of Mr. Murphy's company for one year. Someone else can take over now. Any volunteers, please contact him on murphyslaw@hotmail.com. He is available immediately.

Meanwhile, I would like to get back to my training. Pleeeeeaaaaaaaase! Please let me train, please let me train, please......

I know, I know - fat chance, and all that.

Oops...

2011-07-21T11:34:00.001-07:00

that one went wrong. What I had in mind was along the lines of: get over the nerves, do a solid dive taking a look around in 130m, then: party for a week! What I got was the first proper, solid black out of my freediving career. It seems there is no point in doing things by half, so I went for it in a spectacular fashion, blacking out deep enough for my scooter guardian angel Andrea to get to do the first scooter rescue in freediving history. He says I owe him ten years of his life, and he looked at me quite sternly, but I think it's only fair, as I am sure he took much more than that off the life of his mother who had to watch him crash his motorbike on the racetrack. What goes around, comes around!

The beauty of freediving is, you recover quickly, so after my coaches allowed me to have a dinner of lemon ice cream, I was on the mend. We spent the rest of the week at the mercy of photographer Andy Fox, who showed no qualms in attacking a woman with a camera and a flash at 04:15 am, when I was sitting on the nabq desert beach trying to reflect on the beauty of the sinai sunrise! Well. Good luck with that, there were paparazzi everywhere, even taking pictures of each other:

After I got to chill for one night in the desert the danish feedivers turned up for a minicomp, and I did my usual coaching session, looking after Jakob, who did a national record in CW with 96m, Rune, and new diver Carsten. These guys are always fun and I love to take care of them! When everyone had left, I twisted Andrea's arm a little bit - I might have batted my eylids and said: please take me on a scooter dive, pleeeeeease! Anyhow, we cruised down the reef and took a few turns in 25m. The little devil in me wanted more, the blue was just so beautiful, but Andrea has become annoyingly good at taming it, so no chance in hell, not a single extra meter.

Now I have a hectic month at home where it is - how could it be any different - raining and cold. I will try to follow my homework as closely as possible. I have been told what to eat, and when. Somehow I don't think my coach will agree with my usual breakfast & lunch of coffee, and then coffee.

This is going to be hard work. Will go and have a coffee...

Murphy loves me

2011-07-10T01:23:00.001-07:00

When I was still going deep with lots of tanks - see photo above - my fantastic trimix instructor, Aaron Bruce, once told me never to forget that Murphy loves tech divers. I now realize that he also loves female athletes. All attempts at timing my world record attempt for the perfect time of the month have failed miserably, and so my training has gone rapidly downhill.

During one of the sessions I felt so bad, I hit the brake in 80m, because I had finally failed to keep contractions away on the way down. I was lucid enough to realize that having contractions at well below 100m would most likely give me a massive lung squeeze, so I turned early, grumbling the whole way up. It is a frustrating thing to experience in freediving, which is a sport largely controlled by the mind, but there are moments when you can mentally be as ready as you like but your body just won't play along. Murphy remained in full attack mode for the rest of the week, so I had to listen to super coach Andrea and take two days off to let my body recover. He has been with me on all my dives, as he has developed a new deep safety system: he comes down to meet me in 50-60m with a tech diving scooter! It is a really great moment to see him on the way up, just when I am thinking, am I there yet, am I there yet...

The break had me feeling great in the water yesterday, no stress at all, and I was psyched and happy heading down to 120m, when a freak incident hit me at around 70m: an enormous burp/hick-up! I felt like I had a bubble of air stuck in my throat, went into a full panic as what to do with this - unfortunately, I was unable to find a way to add it to my mouthfill - and by the time I reached 80m equalization was pure chaos. The chaos and I made it to 115m. Then I was so annoyed I kind of sprinted back up, which had Andrea struggle to follow me with the scooter, and earned me a telling off by both coaches. I know, I know, I will be good next time, I promise! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....and I know what you are thinking, but I have NOT been drinking beer before the dive! Honest!

After training I always have to wait around in the pool for Andrea to come and get me out of the 7mm Zodiac suit, so this is when we usually have our debriefings. I believe I might have wailed something along the lines of "I don't want to do another training dive, I don't want to, I don't want to" and the coaches agreed it was time to quit messing around and just go for the record.

Rope has been measured (in the dark, see above), judges are here, all is set. Minor detail: me doing the dive. Ah well...

Did I mention? I have now officially entered the panic phase.

Training...again

2011-07-02T00:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a video from our tandem no limits world record dive!

After a semi day off I went back to train for the variable weight world record. The plan was to do three 80m dives and get comfortable on the variable sled. This is the sistership to the deltaflyer, and is really nice - only problem is, I have to hold on to it which is creating stress. In any case, I was sure this time it would be easy, but no such thing: I felt amazingly horrible and completely unable to focus.

After I was hit on the head by the tank on the way down and hit by the seld on the way up during the first dive, I jumped on the platform to try and get my concentration back, but instead found myself crying tears of frustration, which would not stop during the rest of the session! So annoying. Here is a problem for a blond diver to solve: how to hide the fact that she is crying from a bunch of men who are monitoring their athlete closely, and a cameraman who is zoomed in on her face! During the breathe-up for the final dive, I was so bad I could not get a proper breath, and then Marco messed up the countdown - straight after "two minutes" he jumped to "thirty seconds"! Cazzo! I turned to him and said, quite nicely: "I don't think so." That had them all jump to attention.

After all that, I was really lost and unsure of how to go on. In the morning, I just wanted to disappear, so I wandered off to the beach at the very far side of the deserted hotel. Ten minutes later, my coach had found me! How? How? He's getting spookily in tune with my head, he is. He even came up with the perfect way to fix me: challenge me with something difficult. Just when I was worried that I was too tired to dive, he said to me: "today we do 100m. Or maybe 110m, if you feel good." How the hell could I feel good after yesterday? Impossible. But then my mind started to work. Eight days to go. 110m today, 120m Monday...hmmm.....

By now I simply trust Andrea on his ability to judge how strong I am, so by the time I arrived to train, I had my bite back. My mind loves a challenge. 110m it was, not too bad except for trying to leave the bottom three times and being stuck each time until I dropped way down again and untangled myself.

Last night boss-instructor forced me to eat an entire pizza. He is getting bossier by the minute! Anyhow, today is a rest day, so I will go and hide from him.

We'll see how that goes...

World Record. Who would have thought?

2011-06-29T09:21:00.001-07:00

It is really too strange and still a bit hard to believe, but it's done: yersterday, Andrea Zuccari aka boss-instructor and I dived together to -125m. From there, you can see the bottom! Amazing.

I started the day with my customary rush of nerves, which continued throughout the morning. I have a really special way with this: I do it in half hour shifts, meaning for half an hour I will be totally ok, thinking things such as: what the hell, just a training dive, never mind, etc, and then for the next half hour I will be in a blind panic. Cameraman Emmanuele, who has been in charge of filming the entire process, was laughing at me, telling me I looked like a confused child, because aparently I had taken to twisting my hair to calm down. Well, Manu, you try being sent to 125m by a couple of Italians! See if you have any hair left at the end of it!

In any case, we went out to beautiful conditions and my warm ups were average, as usual in such situations. Then it was time for the first sled warm up to 60m. It was horrible. I felt as stressed as on day one. Surfacing, Marco said: how was it? And my charming partner shouted enthusastically: fantastic! Oh sh....thinks the blond girl, it will all be my fault, it will all be my fault...

Truth was, Andrea was just as bad as me, and when I thought I would faint with the butterflies in my stomach during the final countdown, he could barely breathe from the rush of nerves! Good thing is, once Marco pulls the release, there is nothing for it but to focus, and it worked amazingly well. We touched down in 125m, opened both tanks, shot off the bottom and grinned at each other all the way up, surfacing together. I have forgiven him for pretending he was cool as a cucumber, as he did make feel kind of safe during all our sled dives, and it was really amazing fun to share this dive with him. I will still have my revenge for the other day, though, when he blew the sugar coating off his cake into my face! The gloves are off on that one.

Now it's not party time, unfortunately, since there is the small detail of me having announced another world record attempt in - hold on - 11 days time!

Whoever came up with that stupid idea? I want beeeeeeer........

Going for it

2011-06-27T00:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I did one good dive, and what do the Italians do? They decide it's time to go for a world record! They are mad, they are. I feel cheated. I never really, truly, thought we would get to this point. It just sounded like a nice, albeit far away, idea, and now it's suddenly real! Oh sh...

The photo above shows me and Andrea at 100m, where, as you can see, he is spitting bubbles at me, making me laugh. Yesterday we reached 121m, where my mask was so squeezed I could not see a lot, and while I was trying to work out if the baloon was inflated enough and just going by the feel of the water moving across my face, he was busy shaking a happy fist at the camera. As a result, we spent a rather long time moving up slowly slowly. But , seriously, what in world got into those men? How did it happen that the blond girl is driving the sled? Clearly, this is not my fault, and in any case, it was very good, because I need to practice long dives for my variable world record. So there.

Truth is, both Andrea and I have been very focused and working hard - me on trying to equalise, him on trying to teach me to do it. It appears to be working. Now let's hope that it will still be working tomorrow.

World record attempt No. 1 - coming up!

Magic-100m-barrier

2011-06-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

The photo below is not a result of freedivers suffering from cabin fever, but an attempt to strech the (slightly too tight) necks on my lovely new Polosub wetsuits. The one on the right is the 7mm top that will hopefully make me float up like a cork from 40m on my variable weight world record attempt. I have been trying my best to delay wearing it, but boss instructor forced me to put it on the other day, so I would get used to it.

Now. The buoyancy thing might be nice, but try wearing a 7mm suit when it is 42°C outside. I was not happy, and even less so when Andrea said "oh look! A Zodiac!" He meant me. Charming. Problem is, I do feel like a Zodiac in the 7mm. The guys added insult to injury when they taped my legs with brown packing tape on the platform. I got quite upset, wailing "but, but, it is sooooo ugly! Everything is ugly!", which had Andrea promise to bring a marker pen to paint some flowers on the tape next time. I was unimpressed by this suggestion, and anyhow, he was still in the doghouse for the Zodiac comment, which he then tried to get out of by saying: "but there are nice Zodiacs!" Imagine! What a compliment! Just what a girl is looking for. Sweetie, you look like a lovely Zodiac today! Hmpf.

Zodiac suit on and legs taped, we have been doing some funky dives on the tandem no limits sled, getting down to 100m with no problems to speak of. The fun started when we moved the target to 110m. It's the magic-100m-barrier. You have to hit the wormhole just right with the deltaflyer, otherwise, not a chance. First try we made it past the 100m mark, but we were so fast, I couldn't keep up equalizing and hit the brake, thinking we were way off the bottom. Turns out we were - by a whole meter! I stopped the sled in 109m. It will be hard to live that one down.

+

On the whole, it's all very well, but there is something going on with my mouthfill and I am running out of air too early. A review of the stunning - and embarassing - sled camera footage showed that the amount of air gained in my cheeks when I charge it was equal to, say, a couple of peas. I got quite a talking to by my two coaches for that one. Marco then made me inflate my cheeks right there in the office, and he kept saying, no way, more, put more, you have to relax the muscles, it can't be, you MUST be able to fit more in! And anyway, why are they (the cheeks) uneven? All my cries of it's full, it's full, honest! Did not impress him and he commanded me to go check in the mirror why the left side is inflating more than the right. I was baffled. What the hell do I know? It seems boss instructor has worked it out. It's the dimples. They are uneven. Have you ever heard of such a ridiculous problem?

Somehow the two Italians still have confidence in their ability to teach me. Marco has gone and announced the tandem no limts world record attempt for me and Andrea. Dates are: 25-30th June. Which is starting - hold on - TODAY!! We are currently at 113m.

Did I mention? Oh shit...

Ooops...

2011-06-15T01:45:00.000-07:00

I have (accidentally) announced a world record attempt. I woke up one morning and it seemed like a good plan somehow. Now the mornings are more along the "oh shit, what have I done!" kind of line. You might ask how this happened. Well. I blame Andrea of Only One. He fixed the final part of my mouthfill, making way for fancy ideas to get into my head. As this is all his responsibility, I have come back to Sharm, where he will be in charge of everything, and if I don't make it it will be his fault! Must have the excuses ready at a really early stage of proceedings after all.

We have been training for a week, which has mostly consisted of the guys trying to rescue some remnants of what we did in April after the hectic, crazy month I spent back home. There wasn't a lot left. We started off with no limits dives on the head down sled, and I was having contractions on the way DOWN on a 30m dive! No limits! Can you imagine? It's just wrong, that is. Meanwhile, there is the small detail of me having announced a variable weigth world record, so I will have to swim up. Boss-instructor arrived on the first day and gave me the program. It involves a mix of dynamic and swimming in the pool every morning, plus streching, plus breathing exercises, plus mouthfill exercises. When am I to work on my tan I ask you? Looks like it will be a tough month.

Some things are at least working by now, and after I took a mouthfill from ten to sixty meters head down four sessions in a row, the coaches gave in and we went to play with the shiny, new, lovely toy: the monster no limits sled!

I think it is a bit like a space ship. It should have a fancy name, like the delta flyer in star trek.

We have it set up for tandem at the moment, since Andrea and I will be doing some deep diving together. I did a sweet and easy eighty meters with it yesterday, lots of fun except for the cold water inflating my suit from ten meters onwards during the 60m warm up dives. Tape. Will buy tape.

Can't wait to do more! I simply love new toys. Meanwhile, there was something - oh yes - 24 days to go till the world record attempt. That is - hold on - less than four weeks!!!

Ohhhhh shit...

Fancy Title

2011-05-26T09:55:00.001-07:00

I have just managed to get myself the most fancy title of my life so far. Soon I will own a card saying: “SSI Freediving Instructor Trainer”! Who would have thought? Maybe I will need a business card after all. Oh dear.

I went on the SSI ITS (Scuba Schools International Instructor Trainer Seminar, if you must know) with SSI GOD himself, Ronny Kain. He thought it was a good plan to invite me. I was not so sure I should agree with him on that one, but how can you say no to god? When I came back from Sharm, I found a large box with an equally large Instructor Trainer manual inside, that I was supposed to have read back to front and memorized by heart. When people asked me what I was reading (over my sixth coffee) I tried to explain to them what course I was going on: a course where I will be taught to teach people how to teach people how to dive. You can picture the blank looks I got on that one.

Anyways, I think poor Ronny was faced with a bunch of equally blank looking people in Siegburg. We all studied hard, in fact all night every night and then again every morning before breakfast as well as in all of our breaks, and everyone passed! They made me join the scuba instructor trainer trainees in the water, so I had to wear a tank with my freediving wetsuit, which is the silliest thing, I tell you, and just feels wrong. It’s the first time in years I tried to demonstrate a scuba skill, and it was a rather messy performance, but Ronny just closed his eyes and said a prayer or two and it went well enough in the end.

At the end of the course we were all very happy and very tired, so it did not take many drinks to get us to the singing and dancing part of the evening, and I have a little video of a VERY impressive performance by a person who shall remain nameless.
Mmmm. Post it? Don’t post it? Tough one…

Athlete's break: Hardrock bar!

2011-05-04T03:36:00.000-07:00

Thursday: Egypt, beach

After all that work it was time to leave Sharm for a well earned break. Since the Egyptians decided they weren't going to change the clocks this year, after all, my flight suddenly left at 06:15, meaning I was up and waiting for my taxi at four in the morning, with the Immam chanting away at the nearby mosque. Next, Cairo, then: Munich, where Pure Boarder Simon picked me up and took me to Sölden, a ski resort in Austria, for the final event of the season. The plan was to hang out and have a break from being a serious, train-all-the-time, no coffee, no alcohol, freediving athlete person.

Friday: Austria, snow

This was immediately put into practice at the Black&Orange hardrock bar, where I was finally served a Corona. Or maybe two Coronas. Or three?? In any case, I was still wearing my bikini, same as last year, and had my sunglasses welded on my head. We have identified the Black&Orange as the perfect bar for us misfits, as it is run by a misfit, and could not possibly be further from the usual Aprés-Ski circus, which is why it suits us just fine! After dancing about happily to ACDC, Chilli Peppers and Guns&Roses, we fell out of the bar at 03:00am, only to get up at seven - the guys were working, after all, and had to set up the Carver's Paradise stand. This involved sunloungers and blow-up palm trees, which I think is very commendable. Unfortunately, this set-up failed to make the sun come out, so we tried a sun-dance, by adding my tan and bikini to the mix.

Before I knew it, I was made to work, so in fact I don't think I have a had a rest day at all and should be given the month off. Apparently, boss-instructor does not agree with me. He has given me lots of homework, and I have a feeling explantations such as "the guys made me drink the Coronas. Honest!" won't cut it.

I am off to do breathing exercises right now. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?

Adaptation? Zero

2011-04-26T13:51:00.001-07:00

The not-eating-for-static project was met with much disbelief on the part of boss instructor, who shook his head at me when I ordered one Fanta for lunch. Annoyingly, he was proven right. The whole project worked on a miniscule scale, improving the time without contractions by all of 35 seconds! I struggled to get to 4:30, then thought, alright, will push to five, realized I was low on oxygen and surfaced at 4:32. So much work for nothing - it is too annoying. I think I will just strike static from my freediving program as of now. It will be consigned to the rubbish, together with the noseclip.

Anyhow, boss instructor tamed the devil in my head that was now very annoyed (bad result in static...) and wanted to announce 65m constant weight, so I was all sensible for a change - amazing - and wrote down 50m instead. Unsurprisingly, this was an easy dive. The only problem with it was that Marco and Andrea will now wind me up for ever because I did a 32m and a 50m dive in their competition. And a ridiculous static! I will never live it down.

I should not have been surprised when my day off was once again cancelled, as I clearly did not do any work in the competition. I got to go back on the sled, only with a difference this time: tandem diving! I have to say, it is a bit distracting to be aware that boss instructor is watching me while whizzing down to 100m. I had (or so I thought) an excellent idea how to solve this: Andrea has to dive with his back to the sled, so he can't stare at me on the way down. This somehow did not meet with the guys approval.

I clearly need to work more on twisting them round my little finger. It seems I have not been successful on that count at all!

Apnea brain?

2011-04-20T13:02:00.001-07:00

I am back on the sled - double thanks god, as Marco would say, I can stop that swimming down business and have fun for a bit. Boss instructor decided to send me to 100m yesterday, which almost worked, only I stopped at 96m. Then it was time for a party: all Italians living in Sharm meet at a beach bar every Tuesday and dance about madly. This was not the kind of training Andrea had in mind for me, but I was stubborn and went off with Paola, having promised not to drink, or not too drink a lot, in any case. Which I didn't, only somehow the following foto:

emailed to the dive center the next morning meant I had some explaining to do, such as: I was only pouring the Vodka for someone else! This afternoon, my two instructors were debating if I was suffering from lack of sleep (home at 3 am), apnea brain, or blondness. They concluded that they could not give me more than one thing to think about during my sled dives today, because I was too blond to cope with the information overload. This made them laugh a lot. Charming!

Anyways, it is a little hard to defend myself from such accusations, when I have just had a very special moment. The other night, while Tyler was out and Will and I were cleaning up around the house, I stepped out behind him on the way to the rubbish bin and - ooops - the door fell shut. Will was barefoot and bare chested, while I was barefoot and in my sleeping outfit, which consists of a pair of black hotpants and a black bra top. So there we were, in the middle of Hadaba, amongst the stray cats, stray dogs and stray taxi drivers, at 11pm, me in my underwear, Will semi dressed. Fortunately, the amazingly patient Paola who lives upstairs with Marco just smiled sweetly and handed us the spare key. She has had a lot of practice with freediving brain afflicted athletes, and nothing can faze her anymore.

Tomorrow is a rest day, Friday static competition. My static has gone from bad to worse. My solution for this problem is: stop eating until it's done. I'll report back on success/failure of this program. If I have not wasted away, that is.

New record at Sweet & Salty Competition

2011-04-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

A few hours after my last blog entry, I was on my way down to the blue jetty, ready to start my warm-ups for the record dive. I had one blissful day about a week ago, when my hangs were suddenly beautiful and I thought my adaptation was back. This effect has gone into reverse almost imediately, and all warm-ups are now as bad as ever. Fortunately, I have never allowed such a minor detail to distract me from my dive. It all went beautifully well, the only hick-up were contractions on the way down, which are plain disgusting, but never mind, I equalized at the bottom, took the tag, made my way back up, and was very happy to be shown a white card by Marco, who was in judge mode - see below, together with judge Paola and Andrea, who was safety slave for the day.

Marco has been moaning that we forced him to organize a competition, but the truth is, he needs the practice and the judge points - he even got to judge us in the pool, where Will went and just blasted out a continental record with a 175m dynamic no fins. I bailed early on my dynamic, at a mere 117m, feeling kind of tingely and weird. I supressed the little Anna-devil in my head that likes to come out at such moments, and played it safe for a change. Anyway. See something wrong with the picture below? Yes? There is a beautiful blue sea behind me, but I am wearing my POOL suit!!

The devil was also giving me some ideas of announcing 42m no fins depth, to beat my current record, but I reined it in and announced 32m instead, which I will probably never live down - the visibilty was so beautiful, the guys could safety me from the surface! Having said that, Andrea the boss instrcutor and safety slave can be quiet, since he let slip today that he announced 45m CONSTANT WEIGHT in a competition two years ago, which must be something like 25m off his pb. Anyway, he continued in bossy mode and cancelled my well deserved (I did a NO FINS dive, after all, how horrible!) day off tomorrow, and will put me back on the no limits sled.

Can't say I'm complaining. In fact, I can't wait! Wheeeeeeee....

Brava, Anna, you have earned yourself a deep dive

2011-04-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

It has been four weeks since I started training here, and I have settled nicely into the standard freediving rhythm of not doing very much, except contemplating the choice of bikini, see below:

Or, sometimes, run back into the house to come back out dressed like this:

The weather has been varied, but is getting steadily warmer now. The first night in the apartment in Hadaba felt like I had arrived back home, including being woken from time to time by the sounds of cats fighting, Egyptians shouting and the mosque at 4 am. Beautiful.

Training continued to go veeeery slow for a long time. This has been a major test for my patience. I was well on my way to start pushing for depth, when somehow, something happend - this something is called Marco, Italian rasta man and owner of the Only One Freediving Center, and Andrea Zucchari, his partner and athlete/instructor . One day Marco said: "Anna. Small suggestion. To take the mouthfill lesson with Andrea." Oh, ok then.

Thing is, I may be impatient, but I am also good at spotting people who can teach me things. I took the mouthfill challenge, which started off dry, including all sorts of odd exercises involving strange tools like a footpump (don't ask), and then went on in the water, one on one. It was the most detailed, serious way I have approached the mouthfill so far, and although I have still not dived really deep, it has improved enormously already.

After two lessons free immersion, we carried on with the head down sled, driven by Andrea, so I could focus completely and not be distracted by anything at all. This was all very well, except that I was getting contractions at depth on a 30m sled dive! Adaptation is kind of slow in coming this year. I'm sure both of my Italians think it is all in my mind. They have given up being terribly professional and serious, and have just started laughing freely at me. At the same time, the mouthfill lesson, which was supposed to be three hours, has turned into a full, allround, let's-train-Anna program and I appear to have completely subjected myself to this. No idea how it happened. I arrive every day and ask Andrea (who is kind of bossy) what the plan is, and then I happily do as I am told. It works beautifully.

The third step of mouthfill training involved diving on the big, feet first sled. Now this is of course amazing good fun, especially since we do it no limits, involving zero effort, so that I can do several dives in one session. It is a little complicated to use this sled, and I was having a lot of fun going "wheeeeeeee" with it, and not terribly focused on the drills I was meant to practice, which had the two Italians shaking their heads at me, but in the end they were happy to allow me to pilot the thing and we started serious mouthfill depth training. One day I reached 60m with a mouthfill from ten, and when I got back to the surface, I was so pleased, for me the session was done, target reached. While I sat on the platform trying to remember what exactly had happend down there, the Italians had a small discussion, then Marco turned to me and said: "brava Anna! You have earned yourself a deep dive." How lovely! I don't think I ever earned myself a deep dive before.

So anyway, they put the rope to 80m, plan being to take a mouthfill at ten, refill at twenty, and then reach eighty - or, as Andrea says: enjoy the bottom. I did enjoy the bottom, and more relaxed and easy than ever before. It is magic.

Unfortunately I have now had to step away from playing with the no limits toy, and be a serious freediver for a while. Due to some bad communication the Aida Germany selection process for the world championships got kind of muddled up, meaning I am not eligible to go to either of the worlds. My only option to fix this was to ask Marco to organise a small competition, where we will have five of the six disiplines. Going back to swimming with my fin after the fairground ride no limits diving had the usual effect: as soon as you do a duck dive, my entire body screams: finning? what? NO! The dives are horrible. I have managed to calm this down, however, and have also quickly done a 120m dynamic the other day, which had Marco walking away from the pool muttering: "if you actually trained, you could be a monster" - weeeeeelll, yes, Marco, but then I would have to DO stuff!

In any case, project qualification for the worlds starts in a few hours. Have announced 60m free immersion. No point messing about anymore. Now I will go eat my mid-morning snack.

Andrea has taken over all areas of my life, including this one - the other day he asked me sternly if had I eaten something, and when I said yes, yes, I have, honest, he looked at me suspiciously. He could tell I was kind of shamming it, only not quite how. Truth was, I had eaten - one biscuit. I was sort of aware that this was not what boss-instructor had in mind, so I have been out since to buy cereal bars and am being VERY good now.

Honest.

Water, baby!

2011-03-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

Spring is here, diving season coming and as usual I had a bunch of funky plans, which involved water, depth, dive response, swimming down, etc, etc. Everything was organized, timing was perfect. I made those plan thingies last March, too - then it was all about training for a 100m dive. Last year the ash cloud ruined it, this year a revolution messed it up. I hate to think what it will be next spring? In any case, in terms of productive results, I much prefer the revolution. It appears to have calmed down, so I set out to pack my bags and face the biggest problem a female freediver has to deal with when going away to train: how many, and which, bikinis to take?

The answer to the first question is, of course, there can never be too many. Problem is, we need to also pack two wetsuits, a heavy monofin, several masks, a lanyard, 4kg of weights, neoprene glue, silicon grease, cute beanies (it's still cold!) many pairs of flip flops...endless. And there was no one around to help with the bikini selection! Suggestions are welcome and will be noted for the future - choice, see above.

I arrived in Sharm feeling spaced out, since I had celebrated the start of serious-training-season with one last proper night out at Würgeengel (a Berlin institution), where I believe I may have consumed a fair number of beers. I went in the water the first day, and was surprised by a new nasty feeling: every contraction sent a sharp pain shooting from my shoulder up into my head and down my left arm. Beautiful. Of course, something like that does not appear out of nowhere, and one might say I should have paid attention to it earlier. It was the direct result of me doing this:

all day every day in Aspen, Colorado in February. Apart from nearly freezing out there in -34°C, I also missed seeing an enormous bump that was hidden under a pile of fresh powder and had a monster crash, giving myself whiplash and whatever else in the process. I ignored the fact that I could neither move my head, nor rotate, nor move my shoulders and carried on riding every day. Impossible not to, with such beautiful conditions! Then, when I got home, it seemed to be more or less fine - or so I thought. Until now. Fortunately, I have been exceedingly clever in my choice of training partner, and the lovely Will, who is not only a world class freediver, but also happens to be an ostheopath, flexed his fingers and proceeded to go about fixing me. "If you feel like you've been hit by a truck when you wake up tomorrow, don't be surprised" he said. Quite true, as I was to find out the next day. I thought diving might be relaxing, so I went out to safety Tyler and play around. I changed my mind when I was on my way down to do a hang, and the first contraction hit me at five meters - after - get this - 26 seconds! I believe that is a personal worst, and possibly a world record. It is also just WRONG.

In any case, day four today, and although still sore and achy, I have made it (accidentally) to all of 41m. It felt kind of hard. I am currently asking myself: how on earth did I ever get beyond sixty?? It must have been a dream.

Good thing is: it can only get better. Right?

Science etc

2011-01-29T12:13:00.000-08:00

Once again, I was invited to the BOOT (big watersports trade show) in Düsseldorf by Scubapro. I’m not entirely sure what they want with me, but they seem to think it's a good idea to let me get up onto the (pleasingly pink) stage and talk to people about freedivey things.

I had only one tiny little problem with the whole thing: on Friday afternoon, at 3pm, I was still on the slopes in Wolkenstein, Dolomites, wearing a very bright new Pure Boarding team jacket and laying down the last carves. The jackets are infused with a magic property: they instantly improve your riding. Reason being, you glow so brightly, everyone stares at you when you come down the mountain, so you best look good while your doing it!

Now. At 15:00 I legged it off the mountain and jumped into the car. I had it all worked out: THE MAN was going to drive as far as Munich, a three hour trip, while I would sleep. I would then leave him at the airport and continue on to Düsseldorf, feeling refreshed after my rest. Clever plan. Unfortunately, the Austrians stopped us for speeding, and THE MAN thwarted the clever plan by not having his license, and although I averted a 500Euro fine by looking shy, repentant, and VERY innocent (as usual), they forbid him to drive anymore, so I had to drive all of eight hours after snowboarding all day and partying the night before. Arrival: 2am. I need a better plan for next year.

I am beginning to quite like the BOOT, and enjoyed it even more this year since I had freedivers to support me amongst all the bubble people: Lotta and Linda turned up and where forced to sit at the SSI stand all day every day. Here is Linda, deeply absorbed in important work, which is why she did not manage to give me the finger when I took this picture:

She came straight from SA and was shocked by the German winter. It is getting kind of cold, so much so that even the regs freeze on the spot!! Bet they still work fine, though - I have to say, and this is the honest truth: all the fancy tech diving regs I ever owned either blew up, froze, started freeflowing, or had bits falling off. ALL my deepest dives were done with the most basic Scubapro rental regs in the end! Haha. Now I am even more back to basic, of course, since all I need is a fin. The beauty of freediving.

I was utterly amazed when a whole load of people turned up to my mini seminars, which I held at the SSI stand, in full view of Linda and Lotta, who were equally surprised, I think. Why do people want to come and hold their breath with me? Sitting on a carpet, in the middle of a busy trade show? I simply cannot get my head round it, and keep thinking, never mind, no need to prepare, no one will come anyway. Hmm. Seems I was wrong, and I have to congratulate a whole bunch of adventurous subjects on doing dry statics of up to 3min20sec!! You lot are all mad, you are.

Monday I was supposed to have an easy day, with some medical tests at Düsseldorf University hospital, in the name of science - supposed to last for about two hours, thus giving me time to say my goodbyes at the show and get on the road to drive the 600km to Berlin. Now here is some advice from me: if a bunch of fancy and terribly clever heart specialists get their hands on you, don't expect to get out of there anytime soon! We started at 9:30 in the morning. Since I was expecting to be made to hold my breath, and I hate holding my breath, I did not eat breakfast or drink coffee. We finished at 17:00, and I did not eat, drink coffee, drink water, use the bathroom, or do anything other than hop from one examining table to the next!

Anyhow. I rushed back to the show, had three meetings in the last half hour, and stood at the Unterwasser-party at 18:30, feeling pretty dazed. Dietmar Fuchs asked me if I wanted a beer, and before I could say no, I still need to drive to Berlin, he put a mug in my hand and thus ended the discussion in my head that was going something like: "drive-don't drive -drive..." All was well and I was on track for a good night rest before hitting the road the next day, until someone, who shall remain nameless, announced in a rather bossy fashion after dinner: "Altstadt. Alle. Sofort!" Meaning: everyone to the bar. Now! It appears that the nameless persons are dangerous to be around when they get into the bar-bossy-mood, but no one warned me! At 05:58am me and my new roommate (she kindly picked up the poor, stray, homeless Anna) Dragana set our alarm. To 07:00.
I leave you to imagine the rest.

I am off to the freezing hillsides of Colorado tomorrow. Since the new team jackets make you visible but weren't made for women in terms of insulation, I went out yesterday in search of a new fleece. It was my full, my only, my most serious intention to locate and buy such item. Problem was, I was in London and thus in city-Anna-mode. City-Anna did not want to buy fleeces. She instantly located, and bought, a pair of spikey heeled leather boots that are unlikely to keep Snowboard-Anna warm in Aspen.

Oops.

Kidnapped by aliens

2010-12-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

I suppose you have guessed by now, and it is, unfortunately, true: my long absence from these pages can only mean one thing. Sum of all freediving training sessions since – hang on – July!! is: zero. Déjà vu springs to mind. I guess there are some things in life we just have to repeat over and over again.

I did have a bit of fun at this years’ top notch diving event in the 20m deep indoor dive center dive4life: the SSI Dive Trophy semi final, where the 100 best divers of the year fight it out in various tests. This year, a freediving challenge was added to the mix. I arrived Friday evening, got carted to the tank and thrown in the water to film a demonstration video. After I quenched ideas such as: let’s make the contestants (who have never done any freediving, mind you!) hold their breath for as long as they can at 10m depth, so as to maximise the black out potential, we came up with a safe but reasonably challenging (I thought) version. Dive down to 10m along a line, each meter gets you one point. Still feel strong? Swim ten meters across and up to a line at seven meters depth, detach a karabiner with a key ring and swim to the surface with this token. Total points: 30.

You would think this might be fairly difficult for complete novices. When shown the demonstration video during the briefing gasps of horror where heard from contestants. With hindsight, though, I realize that I have strongly underestimated one important factor: the desire to get points! An amazing two thirds collected all thirty of them. At times I thought they might need rescuing any second, but few gave up. Amazing, and annoying, since this meant that I had to keep going down to re-attach the key rings. A total of around four hours in the water and 68 dives later, I was quite ready for my dinner. I’ll think of something tougher next year, guys!

I went to stay in London for a month, fully focused and ready to train hard, but got floored by a nasty cold, so spent four weeks on the sofa instead, getting grumpy and fat. A single static session with Liv had me start contractions after 42 seconds. I believe this may be a world record. It has yet to improve. I have decided that altitude training is always a fabulous idea, and since the guys from Pure Boarding were twisting my arms very hard, snowboarding season has come early and I have somehow spend three weekends on glaciers already - it has to be good for dynamic. Right?

I was so panicked about not training that I decided it was a brilliant idea to go for a run after the first day of snowboarding of the year and hit upon a very clever plan: as we left in the morning to drive up to the glacier, I asked Sebastian to check where exactly we would reach 10k. On the way down at the end of the day I got changed in the back of the van and then hopped out to run back home. With a look of disbelief on their faces, Simon and Sebastian left me behind, to enjoy the beautiful mountain loneliness. I loved it, but had failed to take into account that I was running at around 1800m of altitude. Punishment for such stupidity soon follows (well, the next day), of course, but then you have to keep up appearance for the smirking guys. I think I didn’t do too badly and none of them noticed that I had, in fact, been close to unable to get out of bed.

Last weekend we headed up to the Kaunertal glacier, in Austria – it was a staggering -20°C. That is a bit fresh for a girl with low blood pressure, and as we stopped for a coffee break, I discovered that I had lost the front half of my feet. Toes? What? Where? Fortunately I was with a bunch of gentlemen who didn’t want to lose the only female in their midst, and took turns helping to defrost me. I did not notice the wind blowing in between my helmet and my goggles, though, and ended up with a bump across my forehead, from frostbite, making me look just like Hermann Munster! Terrifying. I hope it will be warmer when we hit the Dolomites next week.

We have a new guy at Pure Boarding, by the name of Tobias, who is a sports teacher and clearly likes a challenge. One night at dinner we had the usual so-how-long-can-you-hold-your-breath-conversation, and I told him anyone could do two minutes, which resulted in the two of us doing statics in the hotel spa pool after snowboarding all day! He did very well, considering the less than ideal circumstances, and appears to suffer from a thing called the competition gene: first thing he demanded to know afterwards was if I could watch two freedivers at once, so that he and Sebastian could go head to head! I thought I should train, too, and did the one minute/one breath table. I managed six. Just to give you an idea: I have done 17. Aaargh.

Have started doing dry statics in the morning. I start contractions before the first minute is over, and have so far pushed myself to an amazing 2:30. I think aliens have kidnapped me and have replaced the German freediving champion with a thing called couch potato.

Help!

Time travel

2010-08-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

I know I have been bad with my blog recently. There is a big chunk missing from Okinawa. My excuse is, I was depressed, and then I was hungover, from the party. Here is the short version: everyone did their thing, and then the Danish guys won. It was beautiful.

Truth is, I have been unable to do any writing, because I travelled back in time to the year 1952, and as we all know, there was no such thing as blogging, emailing, or mobile phoning back then. While I was still in Okinawa, I had a phone call from a production company looking for someone to double the actress playing the lead in a television movie about Hans and Lotte Hass. For those of you who still think Cousteau was the dude: Hans Hass was there first. He was taking pictures and filming underwater as early as the forties. Check out some of his documentaries, if you can, they are amazing – in black and white, manta rays, sharks, the life on the reefs, you name it.

As soon as I got back from Japan, they carted me off to Vienna for a day, to have my wardrobe fitted. This turned out to be a bright red fifties pin up style bathing suit, which made me kind of nervous, since none of the production team had seen me except in photographs. Imagine they look at you and go: gosh, she’s a little fat! Just as I was standing there on a full exhale to get zipped in, the producer in charge walked through the door with his second in command in tow. “Wow” was the comment, which was a relief, let me tell you. A day at the hairdresser completed the look with top-notch extensions, which was an experiment that once again proved one thing: men are stupid. They will believe anything. Including that a woman’s hair can double in length overnight. Best not to tell them the truth, ever. Illusions are a lovely thing!

We flew off to Egypt with a film crew experienced in the multiple problems that arise in foreign places, savvy to the world and not easily fazed. Or so they thought. Their Egyptian journey started off with a minibus-versus-truck battle on the road to El Quesir. What can I tell you? The minibus lost. No one was hurt and the equipment was safe, so off we went all piled on top of each other into the bus that still had sides and windows.

El Quesir is typically Egyptian place: dusty, with a couple of fancy hotels and a couple of not so fancy ones that are busy sinking into the desert but have something one might describe as character. If you are used to Egypt, this is just normal, and much nicer than the full on tourist hell holes, but if you are new to it all, turning down the dirt road to drive past the dead goat and the skinny donkeys towards the Fanadir hotel, having just escaped the monster truck crash, is a special experience. I believe we were also a special experience for the hotel staff. There were around eighteen of us. The sum of the other hotel guests present when we arrived was two. You get the picture. There was still the Egyptian plumbing and the standard jet engine aircon left for the guys to discover, as well as the fact that faced with a desire for ice the bar staff would look stunned, shrug, say “no have”, then smile happily.

The first day was spent setting up equipment, and I got to meet Daniel. The man is an intriguing mix between mad professor and McGywer. Give him a piece of string, some matches, a couple of cable ties and a little washing powder, and he will make you a rocket that will fire chickens at cars or some such thing. He is also an excellent diver and provides underwater everything to the film industry, so they got him to build a whole bunch of equipment that looked just like the stuff Hans Hass dived with in 1952. Here he is, testing his own rig:

We were made to sign in at Pharao Divers, which was funny since they asked me when I had been diving last, and after thinking long and hard, I realized it was two years ago. I had a feeling this would not go down well, and with visions of a check dive in my near future, I put on my poker face and told them it was two weeks ago, which it was, only it was freediving. Never mind. We went in to check-dive the film units - a mixed experience. First, the lid blew off the pressure gauge on Ingo’s (Hans Hass double) gear, then, just as I was swimming along happily at ten meters, I took a breath and filled my mouth with nothing but water. Zero air. Since I had zero buoyancy, a swim to the surface did not appeal and as I managed to get a sip of air through eventually, I continued the dive like that. Getting out, Daniel asked me if all was well, which it was, except for this minor detail. The other detail was that the old school fins were about six sizes too big, so I was holding onto them by curling my toes, which is not a comfortable (or effective) way to swim.

It was soon clear that safety diver Fred would need assistance, so we recruited one of the dive guides from Pharao, a Danish guy called Tore. He turned up on the boat wearing a chicken vest which said “Safety Diver” in orange letters on the back. Hmmm. Familiar. Turns out he was a safety diver at the world championships in Aarhus, and since Elisabeth and I were the practice victims, he most likely has rescued me already! Anyway, he was assigned to me and had the not so easy job of swimming me around the place for the next two weeks.

I have been involved in some complicated diving, but what we got up to tops it all. We had a main boat, moored on the edge of the reef, from where we all took off in a Zodiac, to get to the actual scene of filming, where we’d anchor. Back on the main boat, a monitor was set up, with our DOP jumping up and down waiting for a picture. This arrived (Well. Sometimes) via a cable plugged into the camera, running to the Zodiac, where either Ute or Leif would bake in the sun all day, overseeing the picture being sent back to the main boat monitor. So Mathias had an image, but he wanted to be part of the action and yell at us, too, which he would do via an underwater loudspeaker lowered from the Zodiac, which was connected to a walkie talkie, which Mathias would shout orders into, which we would then hear (or not, depending) down there. Apparently, so did everyone else who had the misfortune of diving the site. Poor scuba novices were confused for two weeks by commands such as: “Achtung! Very Good! Noch einmal! Weiter schwimmen! Keep Swimming, Keep Swimming, Keep Swimming....” etc.

It was lots of hard work, but also lots of fun. The diving was challenging, which I love, and I was freezing most of the time, which I don’t love at all. Main problem was, we had very little air in the units, so I was busy saving it a lot. Also, since the units have no buoyancy but are equipped with steel tanks, I was as heavy as a stone. With my lovely fins, which, as Tore pointed out, gave me about five percent propulsion, I did not stand a chance of going anywhere but down. The most fun I had the entire time was a scene where I had to descend from the surface with a huge ancient look alike video camera housing. I sank so fast, it felt like sled diving! I was busy whooping and having a blast when I saw the reef rush towards me at about 40m. Just as I was wondering how I would avoid pulverizing the coral head below me with the steel housing, Daniel turned up and I dropped the thing into his arms. Next, I realized that slowing myself down was not going to happen, either, but Tore got there before the reef, so all was well, and I was grinning all the way back up. Usually, it’s once more, again, one more time, repeat that last one, do it again, etc, etc, all the time, but don’t think you get to do something twice if it’s actually fun! Tsss.

There was a distinct lack of dancing girls or other entertainment at the Fanadir bar. Eventually we had a day off, and the night before turned into a longish one right away, with a splash-diving competition in the pool at 1am, organised by our camera boss, Mathias, who cannot be still for twenty minutes without thinking up some nonsense. Well, what can you expect from a grown man who goes by the nickname of Matze. I believe he was genuinely disappointed at not winning the splash diving comp. He’d fit right in with us freedivers!

Just when they all thought Egypt was the worst place they had ever worked in, but they had it sussed now, we had the final round: all permissions for filming were denied. Turns out, they were not granted in the first place. We ended the trip with a lovely man from the coast guard coming aboard to pick up everything that looked vaguely suspicious or like something he could use, to take it back to the police station, to be impounded, a thing they love doing, but usually it’s cars. Anyway, what our guys did not realize is that they were kind of nice, in so far as none of us got arrested, so we all went off in a taxi to Hurghada and flew home the next day, luckily with most of the filming done.

I’ll be over there again before long, taking taxis to the blue hole, with my wetsuits and monofin. In the meantime, time travel has come to an end and transported me, slightly dazed and confused, back to the bookshop, and my customers. This morning, I realized that the window after next is the Christmas window, ohhhh nooooooo ...

Then again: it’s nearly snowboard season. Maybe I’ll get a retro outfit, then Remo and Jörg can’t complain that I’m invisible in the videos. Hmmm. Red?

More diving in Okinawa

2010-07-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

After two days of weather-enforced rest the second constant weight competition day finally kicked off. It started badly for Guillaume, who went down happy as you like to do an easy (!) 102m dive, when he encountered a rope wrapped around the main line at ninety. Faced with this kind of problem at this kind of depth, most divers would have turned. He thought, oh well, I’ll just take the whole thing down to the plate with me, so he pushed the rope all the way to 98m, where it finally got properly stuck, so he went up. We are all very happy he did not get tangled down there. He then got offered to do the dive again at the end of the day, which is in the rules, of course, but may not be a very sensible thing to do considering such minor details as risk of DCS. In the end, all the team captains signed a petition to award Guillaume the full points for his dive, since we are all simply glad that he is unharmed and fully recognise that he would have done the dive easily. The decision went through, and the French team are now in third place, seven points behind team Denmark, who in turn are four points behind the Japanese.

My training buddy Elisabeth has been unlucky with an ear infection, so could not start, but was there to coach me and Martin. I felt quite bad, dizzy and light headed on the boat, but was instantly happy as soon as I did my duck dive. Until a cramp hit me at ten meters, that is. I still carried on swimming, trying to wiggle my foot at the same time, and even managed to take the first proper huge mouthfill of the season. Annoyingly, the cramp just got worse and worse, so at 40m I finally had enough and swam back up going au-au-au-au the whole way. There is only one thing I have to say about this: grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Fortunately our Danish friends were there to distract me, taking Martin and myself on an outing to do some snorkelling around some cliffs and a cave. The spot was beautiful, with lots of little holes to swim through and even a fair amount of fish to look at, especially some very tame batfish, which I just love. There was also an amazing amount of beginner divers being carried around by their guides, which gave me flashes of memory from my previous life as a dive guide in Thailand. Let’s just say I was glad it wasn’t me. On the surface, we had what felt like thousands of snorkelers - Linda would have had a field day. Having said that, I noticed that the snorkelers here are exceedingly well behaved, all with lifejackets or giant pink inflatable rings to support them, and all in an orderly group, hanging on to each other and being pulled about by a commando guide at the front. The cave was beautiful, you could swim over 50m into it and then back out against the light, past schooling fish along the way. We played around for two hours, freaking out hapless scuba divers and filming each other. Lovely.

Next, it was back to static training. Spending the day in the hotel before it was time to go to the pool did not help, and I could feel myself getting grumpier and more miserable by the hour. Sure enough, what followed was a new personal worst, as Jesper calls it, in training. I quit at three minutes. Elisabeth spoke to me sternly and made me go again, so I quit at 3:15 the next time, feeling amazingly miserable. This meant that I had to have another session yesterday morning, of course, and after a lot of struggling I have finally made it past five minutes for the first time this year, so am feeling a little better about the static competition this afternoon.

We have had a bit of a spontaneous party, too, organized by team Denmark, who went out and bought some bottles of wine, invited anyone they came across, and went to climb off their balcony and onto the flat concrete roof that their room opens onto. Now this is hardly a glamorous place, but we stole the chairs and a couple of tables from the rooms around and ended up with about fifteen people, having a rather good time, extremely pleased with the fact that we could feel the breeze blowing on our faces. Doesn’t take a lot to make us happy. The highlight of the party came when Jakob shot up a couple of rockets and firecrackers he had bought earlier in the supermarket. We’re an easy enough bunch to please, really. Give us some wine from some toothbrush mugs, a firecracker, and some silly jokes, and all is well.

Now then. Must rest for static. Urgh.

Team world championships in Okinawa

2010-07-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

Team Holiday germany - the photo was taken by Canadian team member Kevin

Having made my way across a couple of time zones, I climbed onto the hotel shuttle bus at Naha airport a week ago, feeling weird and spaced out. The hour drive did not present me with lush green tropical gardens, as I had hoped, but with a city that blends into city that borders onto a city. Continue in this fashion and you have it. Since the entire island got destroyed during the war, it seems that things have been built up again quickly and randomly afterwards, covering most of the available space in the south with buildings and paved things.

Still, I had high hopes for the “Tokio Dai-ichi Grand Mer Resort”. It turned out to be a concrete high rise. Rooms are spacious, though, and the staff friendly, so I thought I would be fine if I could just go and find the pool, have a swim and then sleep for a couple of hours under a sunshade. Book and towel in hand, I set off. I should have been suspicious when I was told that the pool was on the second floor. It is indoors. There is no beach nearby. On top of my jetlag, I instantly began to feel very claustrophobic.

So far, this has been relieved somewhat by the presence of my teammate Martin, Norwegian Elisabeth, the Danish team and my favourite Kiwi divers Guy and Kerian. It’s all ok when you have people to have fun with. Sure enough, I went out to train at the dynamic pool with the Danish crew, and did my first fifty meter swim in eight months. The result was predictable: it felt awful. The most worrying bit is having lactic legs before hitting the wall. Fortunately, I am on “team holiday Germany”, so I was about to quit and go home when Jakob and Jesper caught sight of me and simply made me do a proper(ish) dive. After the fifty meter turn, I could not swim in a straight line for some unknown reason, but decided to ignore this since oxygen felt fine, so I came up at 100m, actually feeling alright. Damn. Now I will have to think about pushing a bit after all.

It was a day for sorting out technical bits, so I asked Danish alternate Henning to help me check if my neckweight was right. He held me in place just where I would like to be neutral (turns out my weighting is perfect) and then popped up to say: listen, don’t get offended, I promise you what I am about to say is a good thing, honest, it does not mean you’re fat, it’s just, I meant to say – here goes – you have heavy legs. Why, thank you, Henning! This is the first time a guy has apologized to me before paying me a compliment. I guess it takes a diver to understand that a compliment is what it is. He says he got a very defensive, if not outraged, reaction when he said this to a girl before, hence the apology, in case I might get all upset with him. It was very entertaining, and quite charming.

My favorite Kiwi divers Guy and Kerian (background) waiting to dive, sheltering from the rain

Deep diving training itself is complicated by a few factors: one, it takes 45min to drive us athletes there in the hotel shuttle bus, two, the conditions are volatile to say the least. It appears that there are very strong tidal currents, so there is a small window in which things are ok, and then the lines and divers go flying sideways. I pulled down to do a hang for my warm-up, and started contractions after 28sec! Did I mention things don’t feel quite right? On the official training day we were greeted by a rainstorm with thunder and lightning and large waves. After helping the Danish team with countdowns and manning the counterballast, I managed to ignore the fact that I was having contractions on the way down and swam to 50m, not a happy dive, but one that was ok, in any case. A devil has made me announce 56m for the competition, which means I do have to concentrate more than I had planned. Team holiday? What? Where?

Most of us have been in the very warm hotel pool daily, doing statics. I am still just beyond 4min, with a big struggle, which is simply wrong, if you ask me. I have observed a couple of very funky sambas from athletes that shall remain nameless, but who are clearly struggling with the temperature. My favourites for the moment are team New Zealand and team Denmark. They all seem to be pretty together, training well and having a good time, too. The French team is the most professional looking, with Sony Ericson written all over there various bits of matching outfits. Problem there is, the spirit seems a bit low, because they made their final selection only a couple of days ago, so Christian got kicked out. We’ll see how they do, but they collected a yellow card for Morgan on the first constant weight day, which was yesterday. We have been split into two lots of divers, and as always, I have ended up with the day I did not want, namely day two. Getting restless with me are Jakob and Rune, Jesper and Kerian got lucky and have collected their white cards for a 90m and an 88m dive.
The rest of us decided to leave the hotel and make our way downtown for a bit of sightseeing, led by Martin, who is turning out to be even more useful than normally, because he speaks Japanese. It was good to be out and about, but also turned out to be rather hot, so we felt cooked after about twenty minutes. We were contemplating whether it would be rude to go for a swim in the wishing well, but decided against it and went in search for a taxi and a beach instead. This is where we were taken:

I promise I have never seen anything like it. A beach under
neath a motorway bridge. It was only topped by an experience the Danish team had earlier in the week: they arrived on a beach, hot and sweaty, looking forward to a dip, to find that there was no water! The tide was out. All the way out. Apparently, the lifeguards were still on duty, though.

Our constant weight competition day was cancelled due very strong winds. I am now back in restless claustrophobia mode, and really wish I could have done my dive yesterday. Going to do another static. It is WRONG.

Skandalopetra – or: going down with a rock

2010-06-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

There is not much to be said about the last comp day, except that it would have been a day for Linda’s chicken card. Lots of athletes turned early, including some of my coaching protégées. I will have to consider dropping them, as I am clearly in high demand and cannot waste my time on chicken divers. Also, they are spoiling my track record. My only success was Jakob, whom I managed to talk out of his holiday mode and into doing a nice dive. I just told him he had to put pressure on Jesper. Works every time.

I was a failure myself, turning once again at exactly 53m with a non cooperative left ear. Coach Martin would be proud of me for being so sensible and not pushing things. I think I’m quite proud myself, actually. Anyway. Now for the fun stuff: as soon as we got out of the water, we entered party mode, as usual. As is standard custom, this was hindered by the dreaded banquet, but we have been well trained by previous occasions and got all the speeches out of the way, briefly enlivened by throwing cherries at the French table, which we got told off for quite sternly. The party finally kicked off when we decamped to the bar, which was next to a pool. Now you may guess what had to follow. It was all instigated by none other than Nicolas Guerry. He started by going up to people and telling them he needed to just check their key card, which he would then flick into the pool. I am glad to report that I was not the only one thick enough to fall for this. I doubt there were many people left with access to their room after an hour.

After I got chucked into the pool at Rush in Dahab after a triple depth party a couple of years ago, an experience which I did not appreciate, I had decided to stay dry this evening. The first to go in was Stavros, and soon Nicola and his friends were on the prowl for new victims. Strategy is everything in situations like this, so I had cunningly placed myself next to the largest man around, in the shape of South African cameraman Barry. As soon as any wet men came to get me, I just flung my arms around his neck and clung on for dear life. This proved amazingly successful for about an hour. The guys approached several times, thought about various angles for grip or lift, simply got pushed away by Barry once or twice, saw that they had no chance and left to find another victim. Just when I thought I might stay dry, after all, they hit upon a new plan: they put Stavros in charge of the military operation to get us in the pool. It took about ten guys. It was also the beginning of the end of the party, as everyone was now too cold to continue much longer. The poor guy in reception was faced by around forty freedivers, dripping all over the floor, demanding new key cards. Not sure if they will have us lot back next year...

Next up was a hangover flight to Rhodes, to take part in the Skandalopetra Games at Lindos. Skandalopetra is one of the oldest ways to dive, used by the Greek sponge fishers hundreds of years ago. It’s simple: a rope is tied to a flat marble stone. You just hang on to the rock to get pulled down, and when you have enough, you pull the rope and your mate at the top pulls you back up. Essentially, it is a very basic form of no limits diving. Herbert did a world record of 107m last year, which the organisers had asked Stavros to come and break. There is a minor problem: you are not allowed a wetsuit, fins, mask, or anything else, except swimming trunks and a noseclip. This presented me with a challenge the guys thought quite excellent: you jump in with a 10kg stone - I promise you: the bikini does NOT stay on. Somehow, everyone wanted to take pictures or be in charge of video all of a sudden. But hey, we women are creative with outfits, so I managed to dig out a sports top and a pair of hotpants that I held in place with my weightbelt. It worked beautifully, except once, when I forgot to tighten the belt and it nearly all went wrong.

The event was organised by a guy from Thessaloniki called Nicolas. He was extremely welcoming and kept telling us about the 100 people that would turn up shortly. We kicked off with about ten, which was fine by us. The municipality had arranged an enormous platform for us to dive from, which was all very well, only the thing did not seem very seaworthy and needed to be towed out of the very narrow entrance to St Pauls bay, in which it was moored, every day. The first time, we took bets to see if we would be shipwrecked on the rocks on the way out, or out there in the distant sea when the wind picked up, smashed by the waves. Since the platform was kind of yellow, it quickly got dubbed the ‘SS Saganaki’ – Saganaki being a slab of fried cheese, for those who are not acquainted with Greek cuisine, and also Will’s favourite dish of the week. The SS Saganaki was piloted by captain Tsaziki, who managed to shout commands on anyone who came near. Amazingly, they anchored the thing in around 70m of water on the first day, so we did actually get to do some dives. Visiting the thermacline at 27m with no wetsuit on was an interesting experience, I tell you. As we were told that it was customary to compete in teams, Philipe and I joined forces and became team Germany/Canada. When I got ready to handle the ropes for his dive and to pull him back up, I was greeted by slightly worried stares from the Greek side, who were clearly not used to the sight of a blond girl handling ropes. It was surprisingly easy to get him up – as long as the diver stays streamlined and you don’t break you rhythm, it is fine. Had there actually been a competition, I reckon team Canada/Germany would have kicked ass.

Every day we were told 100 people would arrive, every day we went out with ten divers and a lot of hangers on, including a dog. As six of the ten divers were made up by us lot, I am a little surprised at the lack of Greek participants. Maybe they were all frightened away by the prospect of being beaten by a girl and a Canadian? Anyway, Stavros was to do a deep training dive on day three, so we went out with the Saganaki ship, dropped the 110m of anchorline in 105m of waters and proceeded to drift along the coast towards Turkey at a rate of several knots, until we got stuck in around 52m of water, where some guys jumped in to dive, only to find that there was a ripping current taking them off at a 45° angle to do a no limits dynamic instead. It was weird. The platform was populated by terribly serious looking CMAS officials, which always brings out the very worst in us, in the shape of a quickly rising urge to be extremely silly. Since Stavros could not do his dive, we had him visualise the performance instead (see picture above), and to be proper, we made Manos visualise the safety, Fred visualise taking pictures and Will visualise pulling the rope. Had we been able to find a judge to visualise giving the white card, the record would have been valid.

Next up is a flight to Berlin, where I have ten hours to unpack and repack my bag, visit the bookshop to do all the work I should have done in the last four weeks, and rush back to the airport for a looooong journey to Okinawa, Japan. Sushi! Can’t wait.

Fun and Games

2010-06-19T13:11:00.001-07:00

Now that I have the big dive out of the way, I have gone into holiday mode. The day after my record, I went out on the first boat, to open my coaching business, and spent all day bobbing in the waves and pressing my services on various people. A coaching success was Johan, who wasted no time in declaring the Swedish no fins record with 68m. He looked strong until he reached the surface, then he looked like he needed my help, so I yelled. He pointed out later that we have now given each other a national record, which I think is rather lovely. I was also able to help out Kerian, who had announced 80m FIM, with his pb being 60m. This was the first time I saw him a look a bit nervous. He had come up with an amazingly clever plan for getting comfortable on the dive. Turning at the bottom at 80m, he was going to start swimming up no fins until he felt good and got settled, then he was going to begin pulling. Have you ever heard such a thing? I felt it was my duty as a coach to cure him of his temporary insanity, so I looked at him as sternly as I could and said: no you’re not. You are not going to swim. You are going to pull. You are going to like it. He looked a bit surprised but gave in without discussion and had a lovely dive. I believe a combination of this and the superman suit has made him feel very brave, so he has declared 101m for tomorrow. I would like to remind you that his pb of a few days ago is 90m. Balls of steel, said a fellow diver. I believe it will be my job to look after this one again. Can’t wait!

Good thing is, since I have pretended to have a share in getting Kerian to do good dives, he has put a word in for me with blue seventy, and I am now the proud owner of prototype superhero suit, see above. If this makes my diving go the same way Kerian’s has gone, it will be quite brilliant! It looks good in pictures, too, which is obviously the most important thing of all. Guillaume has announced 118m for tomorrow, which will be a pb for him. I reckon it will be an easy dive – I saw him surface laughing after 114m. Superheroes wherever you look, I tell you.

Of course we freedivers have a lot of downtime, and we never seem to run out of silly things to get up to. The other day a crowd of us had gathered around the pool, when safety stud Daan accidentally (well...) fell into the pool with one of the sun loungers. More furniture soon followed, and instant fun was had by all, diving down to have our picture taken by Laura. Problem was, the owner of the hotel was actually swimming in the pool himself, and although we made a vague effort at being discreet, he eventually realized that we had sent his chairs to the bottom and proceeded to have sense of humour failure, in Greek, at whole bunch of freedivers, who sat on the side of the pool, a picture of innocence. We have decided that the guy is the Greek answer to Basil Fawlty, wandering around the place, ready to pounce on people when they least expect it. The photo shoot was followed by a pack-a- much-as-you-can- and-then-check-how-floaty-you-are- competition, which was won hands down by George. She still floats with two neckweights on. Amazing.

We have a special sleep study going on here, so random athletes have been getting all wired up. It was Livy’s turn the other night. Check her out:

I believe this is a very clever study indeed. They wire you up like that to check for sleep disturbances, thus making sure that you will effectively be getting NO sleep at all. We could not stop laughing when we saw Liv, and immediately started to make up lots of ways to mess with her. The highlight came when she told us to cut it out and be quiet, since the thing strapped to her chest was recording sound, to check for snoring, and movement. Tim and I were busy bouncing up and down on her bed and knocking the headboard against the wall within seconds, to see if we could make the scientist think she had had wired up robot sex. In between making grunts and groans we did give the game away by succumbing to fits of the giggles. Not sure what the scientist will make of this one.

Today was a rest day, so when the guys from the south African film crew offered to buy me a beer last night as I wondered into reception to try and write my blog, I decided it was time for my 100m beer. Little did I realize that the moment I took the first sip, I would be lost. Somehow, I ended up on the top of the cliff behind the hotel, dressed in flip flops and torn denim shorts, with a bunch of guys in equally shabby attire, entering the swishest bar around, full of women clad in high heels and mini dresses. I felt distinctly underdressed, which did not stop us from drinking beer and tequila and dance about merrily until five in the morning. I survived by tossing one tequila off the cliff, hiding one behind a flower pot, pouring one into someone else’s glass, and ditching one under the table. One of our guys removed his shoes and then went to sleep in the bar, one showed the most amazing dance moves to the locals, and one fell asleep in the corridor outside judge Ute’s room because his key card did not work and he failed to navigate his way back down to reception. All in all, a brilliant night, followed by an adequately painful hangover. I’m a little nervous about tomorrow night’s party. Help! Anyone out there to look after me? Please?

New German record in variable weight: 100m!!

2010-06-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

100m breath

This morning, I was definitely back on track in terms of nerves – I had a hard time forcing down my porridge breakfast at 7:30am. Fred sat at the table with me, and heard a big sigh – oh come on, he said, looking at me all surprised. The nerves are not actually fear of the dive, it is just that I want to make it so badly, it makes me nervous to think that I might mess it up. Having listened to jokes along the lines of have a beautiful dive, did you have a beautiful dinner, and such things, I had asked Jakob to come out with me to calm me down and coach me. His job was to yell at me at the surface and get me to focus. As we sat in the dry boat, he told me quite sternly: Anna, you are not going to be happy and smiley when you come up. You are going to be grumpy and serious until you have seen the white card. I just nodded and said: ok. Ok. OK! He then went on to promise me a coffee for after the dive, which got me very excited, I tell you. Coffeeeeeeee!

Stavros went first, and someone should do a study of what the man eats for breakfast. First he was doing safety all day yesterday, then he went out early to set up the sled for his own record, then he just popped down to 150m and came up easy as you like. He was fully focused and said “I AM OK” very seriously when he surfaced, then let out a huge roar when the judges showed him the white card. Natalia was up next, having announced a variable weight world record with 125m. She has been trying out various combinations of mask, no mask but noseclip, fluid goggles with noseclip, fluid goggles without noseclip. This is the option she went for in the end, just holding her nose. I have not seen that before, but it seemed to work for her. She also took five kilos of weight off the sled, and went down with 15kg instead of twenty, which slowed her down a lot and made equalisation much easier. She got down and back fine, and has added yet another WR to her name. Doesn’t look like she’ll be stopping anytime soon.

I was next to go, and had an easy time breathing up with the sea once again flat calm. While visualising my dive, I focused on things such as equalising my mask before taking the mouthfill, which I did as soon as I released the brake – unfortunately, I was a bit too zealous and released a nice big puff of air into the sea. The second one escaped me when I overfilled my mouth and could not hold the air in anymore ( last time I checked, my hair was still blond). I could feel a cramp coming on at around sixty meters, which distracted me so much, I nearly lost my mouthfill, so equalisation was very complicated and I had to put a good long stop in at 82m. Finally the left ear cleared, and I dropped down to the bottom.

100m rocket sled

Getting off the sled, I was starting to think about what I needed to do, instead of just being excessively pleased with myself, which worked much better and kept narcosis at bay. I had a harder swim up this time, due to the longer stop, but Daan met me at 25m, and it always just wonderful to be in the hands of people you know will keep you 100% safe. Jakob did a good job telling me what to do on the surface, and I was all serious and said “I AM OK” instead of going on about how lovely the dive was, so Giota and Ute were finally able to give me my white card. Rarely have I been so pleased with anything. It was amazing, and I have to say thank you to the fantastic safety team, who just take care of everything and give you the freedom to go all out and do dives like that. Wonderful, guys, thank you thank you thank you!

amazing 100m safety

100m coffeeeeee!

Benny went right after me, and did a sweet and easy no limits dive to 105, another Australian record, so we rounded off the sled morning perfectly, with everyone back happy and well. I went to sit down by the beach after a quick shower, and was busy texting everybody, when coach Jakob came and rounded off the morning by bringing me a huge portion of the most fantastic chocolate ice cream. 100m ice cream – nothing tastes quite like it. I added the final touch with iced coffee after lunch, and am now feeling full, tired and as pleased as punch. Tomorrow I am having a day rest, and will be out to coach anyone who puts their hand up. So far, I have Kerian, who is not wasting anytime and has announced 90m constant weight, when his previous pb is 82. I like it, but am quietly getting ready to yell a lot when he comes up. He is followed by Jakob with 90m, too, then Will, with 87 no fins, a big dive I am excited to see. Next one is Niki from New Zealand, who has been doing brilliant no fins dives, in fact, she did 57m in training and is going for 59m tomorrow, pretty exciting with the world record being 62m and two more competition days to go. I am very happy to coach her, and will be sending my best good-dive vibes when she leaves the surface. She is followed by George, with 48m constant weight, and then Liv, who had a strong 60m swim with her fin yesterday and is going for 44m without fins tomorrow.

So that’s six so far. I’m sure I will pick up some strays when I am out there. I wonder if I could announce a world record in coaching the most athletes in one morning?

100m and the most beautiful f***-up

2010-06-15T13:06:00.001-07:00

So. Much in my usual style, I declared a record dive without actually bothering to try the depth in training first. Surprisingly, I was not really feeling stressed at all this time, and did not spend all evening going round saying “I’m so nervous, I’m so nervous, I’m so nervous” to anyone who crossed my path. I woke up at five, but just calmly went back to sleep again, very unusual. Having my oatmeal with banana for breakfast, I was waiting for the nerves to hit me, but nothing. The “oh shit what have I done” moment finally arrived when I was putting my wetsuit on, and it was so bad, I actually considered being sick there and then.

Trying to see if staring at my feet in the clear water will make the nerves go away. It does not.

Outside, I was greeted by perfect conditions, a glassy sea, slightly hazy, in an eerie and very atmospheric way. I was the only one going for a record that morning, so had the warm up lines and the safety studs all to myself. The only non-Greek safety stud, Daan, was appointed as my coach, a role he took very seriously, including massaging my foot – I think he was trying to take my mind of giant knot that was in my stomach. I did just two warm-ups, both rubbish, decided they were not going to get any better, and went to climb onto the sled. Nik from Cyprus was in charge of my attempt, and did a great job at making me feel like everything was under control, including letting me know that he would be personally meeting me at 25m, which I love – nothing like knowing that someone you are happy to completely rely on will be there to keep you safe when you are going for the hugest dive of your life. Except for continuously thinking “oh shit”, all was well, so I released the brake and shot off into the blue. Equalisation worked very well, until 89m, where I could not clear anymore, so I stopped the sled and spent a few seconds trying to move the little bit of air I still had in my mouth into my ears, with no success. Hmmmm, I thought, how far can it be, looked down to see if the plate was anywhere near, and spotted the tennis balls. Seconds later I hit the bottom, with pressure on my ears but lots of air in the mask. Well. One might say there is room for improvement.

100m!! I admit to feeling excessively pleased with myself as I was finning back up. Going round in my head was mostly “I did it, I did it” with a brief “wow, it’s a long way” thrown in. Nik came to meet me at 25m, and I was just thinking what a great dive it was, when I broke the surface and proceeded to present the judges with the second most beautiful surface protocol ever. Sadly, it was not one that could be rewarded with a white card: I came up, did not bother to take a breath, started laughing while removing my mask, then gave three OK signs, and said, still laughing: “oh what a beautiful dive”. The second it was out of my mouth, I wanted to take it back, take it back, take it back, and replace it with “I’m ok”, but the reverse-the-time-space-continuum button did not work. Truth is, I was off my head with narcosis, in a very happy kind of way. I simply blurted out the last thing that was in my mind before I surfaced. Tomorrow I am going to repeat ImokImokImokImok the whole way up. In fact, I might start saying it to myself in my sleep later tonight. I guess I have had my training dive now, so all should go swimmingly. Benny gave me a radioactive sports recovery thingy to drink, itwas so vile, it has to be good. I think I am now glowing in the dark though - see below:

Now then, time to report some news and gossip from the competition. If mine was the second best SP ever, Stavros has the winning ticket. True to his superhero reputation, he went to quickly do a no limits record one morning, with 150m. The footage from the bottom camera shows him touching down, inflating the liftbag and on his way up in a matter of seconds. He was definitely fine. Then something happened on the way up, and he beat even me in terms of narcosis. The surface camera video is a thing of beauty: you see him come up, but then he stops to do a somersault just below the surface, which he has no recollection of. He then pops up, removes his goggles, points and shoots at the camera guy, and simply swims away! All the while he manages to look terribly cool and manly and in control. He will go again tomorrow, too, so we’ll see what new things we can come up with between the two of us. Other than that, we have had a great variable record from Benny, who unlike me, did a 100m training dive and then went on to get it white carded a day later.

Tim and Benny before the rubber ring challenge - don't ask

We have had to great days of competition, too, Guillaume just got a 110m dive out of the way on the first day, even more amazing as he was playing catch me with the tag down there, which he picked up and let float away several times before taking it back to the surface. Johan has amazed everyone by just going down to 65m without fins in the second attempt today, so the Swedish record is looking shaky. There are definitely small horns growing out of forehead by now. I had announced 58m free immersion yesterday, but decided to bail when my ears hurt and squeaked during my warm ups, since I want to save them for tomorrow. Instead, I coached lots of people, including Kerian Hibbs, who is looking great in a blue seventy suit he designed himself – we call it the superman suit, since it seems as soon as he puts it on he can do no wrong. Today he squared up to Guillaume – they both announced 70m no fins. Kerina went first, and I watched him sprint down off the surface and back up again without ever slowing down. He says he saw stars all the way up (more narcosis - the theme of the week!), but his superman powers kept him safe. Guillaume made it, too, around 30sec slower. He said he looked up from 20m, and was not sure how he was going to make it back, as there was nothing left in his arms, but he was laughing because the breath hold itself was still so easy. Jakob arrived the night before the comp, and went straight out to set a new Danish free immersion record with 75m, he said he laughed all the way up because it was so easy. Mark Harris from the UK also set a national record with 70m FIM; he went out to do his trademark constant weight with bifins dive today, 70m again, in ancient C4’s. We are all convinced that given a decent pair of fins, or, oh my god, a monofin, he would hit surprising depths. We love having his wife (well...) Laura here, since she just goes around and quietly takes lovely pictures that make us look like athletes, rather than a bunch of weirdos who exist on a diet of bananas and burp a lot. I also had the joy to coach Will today, who went down to 97m to grab the continental FIM record, with a loooong dive time, also dropping and catching the tag. Really guys, get it together!

Alright, there is lots more, but I have to go to bed, I promise more stories once I have the white card business out of the way. In our spare time, we have rubber ring wrestling matches in the pool, amongst other things. It’s lovely.

Time to get serious

2010-06-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

Alright then, I’ll give you the story behind the last “pictures only” post. I was not going to be messed around by invisible ashes from Iceland again, so I came up with a clever plan: take a bunch of very deep, and very serious freedivers, get them all down to Nice, squeeze them on a sailboat and start training. The freedivers where: George, Liv, Elisabeth, Martin, Jakob and my friend Andy, who is a boarder and sailor, but we just made him into a freediver, too, so now he’s lost.

Elisabeth and I arrived first, and, since we are so serious, went straight out to dive, just next to the port of Nice, where the shore conveniently drops right off to 100m+. It was lovely, if a little fresh, with around 15°C on the surface and a charming thermacline hovering at about ten meters. I was doing my hangs at 9.6m. You get the picture. We both did a couple of easy dives, although I was holding back a little with some pain in my left upper jaw. Remember the Aspen dental disaster? Well, the tooth came out as soon as I got back, and the surgery for the implant was done the day before arriving in Nice. The guy not only drilled a hole through my jaw into my sinus, but also recommnded NO exercise for a week. Great.

Since I could definitely feel the new sinus-to-mouth connection on deeper equalisations, I was taking it easy the first few days, and did a maximum of 50m. We did couple of fun variables going down with the bottom weights, and I was beginning to feel a little adapted. One morning we had set to rope to 60m, where Elisabeth did a lovely dive, and I went after her with my alarm set to 48m and every intention to turn at 53. On the way down, I was testing a new thing I picked up from the Danish guys last year: if you cannot equalise, level off, raise your head, clear, drop down again. Since I was diving without packing and still messing around with the mouthfill, I missed a couple of equalisations and levelled off for the first time at around fifty. It worked beautifully, which got me quite excited, and I did the same thing again at around 55m. Raising my head, I could see the plate, which Martin had loaded with some tags, to make things more fun. “Oooooh, I can get a tag” thinks the blondie, and quickly drops down to sixty. Feeling terribly pleased with myself, I started swimming up, clutching my piece of velcro. After about ten meters, it started to feel kind of hard. Reaching forty, my legs were completely lactic. I struggled all the way to the surface, came up onto the buoy, forgot to take a breath and had my first nod off from a deep dive. Ooops!

Liv helped me to calculate descent and ascent speeds during my dive, and we soon saw that something was not right. I went to check my weighting the next day, and discovered that I was neutral at six (!) meters! No wonder swimming up felt kind of hard. I took it easy on the rest of dives, and stuck to the low fifties, looking for some adaptation. Liv had fun playing with no-fins-no-arms, which got her to 26m and gave her a new understanding of the power of her leg kick. Jakob did a lovely 72m dive in the gathering dusk and we got new freediver Andy all the way down to 17m. See? Serious, serious training. Yoga in the morning, then training, then sleeping, then eating, then training, then sleeping. Well, I will admit, there may have been the odd moment of silly behaviour and fun activities, such as climbing the mast and swinging from a rope. We did have mess-with-Andy-day and mess-with-Jakob-day, too, which were highly entertaining. All in all, we got the fun out of the way most days and then fitted in a little freediving, too.

I flew back to Berlin for a whole day, where I whizzed around and sorted out various things, before putting all my stuff back into my bag to head for Athens, and the third Mediterranean freediving world cup. I arrived a few days early, together with William and Phillipe from Canada, to see if we could get some pre-comp-dives in. Energizer bunny/organizer Stavros was busy rushing from one end of Athens to the other to buy a kilometre of rope and a couple of tons of weights, so it did not look good. I talked Will into coming to the pool to coach me in a static instead. Yes, you did hear right, a static, which I believe just illustrates the level of my desperation. Since I had done a total of two static sessions in the last eight months, having to surface after four disgusting minutes because I felt low on O2 should not have been a surprise, but I tell you, it was. I roped Phillipe into doing some more and am now back to 4:45, still horrible, but O2 fine. After three nights of being pampered with lovely food by Giota, we caught Stavros in a moment of weakness and he said yes to a quick diving expedition. We had to go and rent a boat, which, beautifully, was called the “fun-yak”, and got dubbed “f***-yak” right away. It was exactly like trying to ride a bathtub a couple of miles away from shore through the swell. There was more water in the thing than outside, and bits started to fall off it five minutes into the trip. Clever freedivers that we are, we had decided to do variable dives, just holding on to the weight. Will went first, aiming for sixty meters, and got to the end of the rope, which, strangely, turned out to be at 57m. I found all of fifty meters, and by the time it was Stavros’ turn, he had all of 48m! The f***-yak was drifting so fast, we were doing sideways depth, going shallower by the minute. To reward ourselves for this useful and clever training session and enormous exertion, we consumed an enormous dinner and then headed off to get serious in Kalamata the next day.

We invaded the Messinian bay hotel around lunchtime, and the poor staff got their first glimpse of the trouble they were about to be in. It started with Will, who was inspecting various rooms to see if he liked the bathtubs, and continued with the fact that half of us appeared to have arrived early, a problem in a hotel full of guests for a Greek wedding. Some people above my head have flooded a bathtub since then, we have been asking the poor waiter for olives and cheese when he doesn’t have any, half the people are vegetarian one day and eat meat the next, the other half don’t eat pasta or bread, and all of us want lunch and dinner at times when the staff usually have their break or are on their way home. It can’t be easy. One waiter tried to make sense of the situation, so he went around asking how many of us were vegetarian, so we immediately asked what the vegetarian option on the menu was, which got him looking quite suspicious. He finally relented and said: well, you can have some rice. As opposed to pork with rice, that is. You get the picture – I don’t think they quite understood what they got themselves into when they agreed to put us all up.

Training started last Monday. The boats are mooring so far away from land, taking the transfer out feels a bit like heading into international waters with a little rib. Every evening at around seven, Stavros puts up a list that we have to sign into, to get a training slot. This causes mayhem and lots of elbow action, since 34 freedivers all want to train at 10am, much in the same manner as all freedivers want to eat bananas. We have people from all over the world here again, including top divers Guillaume Nery and Natalia Molchanova, who has announced a variable world record and is training on the sled every day. So far, things have been mixed for her, since Stavros has got the big sled out here, which definitely resembles a rocket. I believe it makes a whizzing sound on the way down. She does not like the speed and has had some trouble clearing her ears, but still has a few days to go before her attempt.

Since I got no training in Athens (well, not counting the funny-yak outing), I did not think I could get close to my target depth for variable weight this time. Going out on the first day, I was distracted in the water, and totally forgot to take a mouthfill at the surface on my FRC warm up. This suddenly occurred to me at around ten meters, so I just brought air up without thinking about it, thus giving myself my first ever squeeze, on a warm-up dive. What can I say? Blond. Rest in the afternoon followed and then a careful 65m sled dive the next day, which went very well (except for getting a cramp just before I hit the bottom, minor detail), so I was considering either 70 or 75m for the day after. Coming up to the line, Stavros suggested 75, which sounded just fine to me, so off I went, on the rocket sled. I had a depth alarm at 65, and was wondering why I was taking so long to the bottom, when I finally had to hit the break having lost my equalisation due to another cramp. Pulling up I was a bit unhappy with myself for not equalising down to 75, and was thinking things like: I am not ready for a deep sled dive this time, it’s not happening, I’ll make a new plan, etc. Back at the surface, they all looked at me a bit funny, and Stavros kept trying to see my computer. In the end I checked it myself: 82,5m!! Apparently, there had been a bit of a misunderstanding with the rope, which was at 85m instead of 75m. They had a fun moment topside when the guy on the sonar shouted out “seventy meters – seventy five” and then, instead of “touch down – coming up”, he said “eighty?”, which had them wondering whether the sonar was broken. It was not.

Having thus just skipped a whole training dive, I took a day off and then went for ninety meters yesterday, no need to mess around when things are going well, after all. I woke up feeling kind of nervous, and was quite convinced that this was not going to happen all the way through my warm-up. I got on the sled, did a breathe-up without countdown, released the brake and went faster than ever. At 65m, I stuck my elbows out to try and slow down a bit, but looking at my profile, it made no difference. At around 80m, I cleared one ear but not the other, which I proceeded to ride to 92, where I opened my eyes to find that my mask was fully equalized! I even made it back to the surface without a cramp this time, and, apparently, came up and said “fuck that was good”, all on camera for the South African film crew who are here shooting a documentary. Dive time was 2:14, 92m at 58sec, average descent speed 1.7m. Last year, I did 90m in 2:40, but somehow the rocket descents seem to agree with me, and I have decided to waste no further time and have declared a record attempt for Sunday.

Cross those fingers! I need all the luck I can get.

Happy Freedivers training from a lovely boat:

2010-06-04T01:12:00.000-07:00

Stunning sunrise

Beautiful freediving

Perfect breakfast

Lots of fun

Perfect lunch

Deep training

Lots of silliness

= freedivers in freediving heaven!

06:00: Dahab, Egypt. 20:00: Sölden, Austrian Alps.

2010-05-13T05:10:00.000-07:00

I believe I may have said things like „snowboarding season is over“ in a previous post, and I did have every intention of starting the freediving season with a two week trip to train and compete in Dahab. What I had not considered when I based half of my homeground in the UK was that in the case of a volcanic ash cloud arriving, you are STUCK. You are not going to leave the island. Trains, ferrys, boats, were booked up days in advance. In the end I secured one of the elusive Eurostar tickets and made my way to Cologne via Brussels, nearly getting into a fist fight with a big fat man who took my seat, arriving wound up and grumpy at the magical „Dive4Life“ indoor dive center. They had kindly offered to help me to get at least some training done, and I spent two days there doing FRC’s and swimmig around the underwater temples while the staff looked after me. This wonderful facility will be my regular winter training ground from now on. Check it out: www.dive4life.com

I arrived in Dahab a week late, and did all of five days training. It was brief and messy and I do not feel ready and in freediving mode at all, which has been made worse by a slightly insane extention of winter mode. In my defence: the guys twisted my arm! Jörg, Sebastian, Remo, Simon and the rest of them had been telling me all along that I simply had to come to the carving masters in Sölden. When I said I couldn’t , because I was only coming back from Egypt on the Friday, they said I could fly straight there. Hmmm. Ok. Possible. My next objection was that I could hardly take my snowboard and gear to Egypt with me. Sebastian told me he would send a UPS sticker to have my stuff picked up and delivered to him, which he would then bring. They were set on removing all obstacles from my path, so what could a girl do?

At six in the morning I was outside our apartment in Assala, on the beach, watching the sunrise while waiting for the taxi. A mad journey later, having nearly missed every connection along the way, I got off the train at the Ötztal station, at the bottom of the beautiful Ötztal valley in the Austrian alps at eight in the evening and told a surprised taxi driver that I wanted to go up to Sölden, the ski resort, with my monofin and my suitcase full of bikinis.

Shortly afterwards I was in the Black&Orange bar, with the whole carving crew, drinking beer and dancing about to ACDC while still wearing my bikini, which the guys seemed to think was quite exciting for some reason. Since I wear nothig but bikinis for weeks during freediving season, I couldn’t quite see what the fuss was about, but there you have it. It was a surreal day, but those kind of adventures make life exciting, so we proceeded to drink lots until three in the morning. The next day we went up to the glacier, but I felt like I was on holiday so did a total of three runs and then succumbed to any suggestion of coffee coming my way. It was lovely to see Anja and Biggie, fellow carving girls, who joined me in the non-snowboarding-cappucino-drinking Saturday. Sunday was so foggy, you could not see a thing, and it was snowing, too – I promise the gondola is here somewhere:

Imagine being on the beach in Dahab one day and then out here, snowed on, the next. Here I am, with my fellow Black&Orange companions the brothers’ Keucher, who took good care of me all weekend (I believe it may have been necessary, as the amount of Coronas consumed exceeded two...). I am still wearing my bikini underneath, but as you can see, it failed to make the sun come out:

Arriving back home in Berlin very late Sunday night, I was certain that my snowboarding season was over, inspite of Sebastian’s suggestions that he would take me along to the final pure boarding glacier trip the following weekend. I had a workshop to teach, after all, so I threw my old and quite broken snowboard boots in the bin and packed away my gear. Ooops. When I called the divecenter on Thursday, there were too few students to run the course, which I took to mean that the carving season had not ended yet, after all! An email to Jörg confirmed the availability of hire boots, and Sebastian put the extra seat back into his van for me, and off we went, to the Alps, again. We arrived in time for dinner and a few drinks, till three in the morning, then got up at seven, for a sunny day with excellent snow. The weather moved in in the afternoon and in a moment of freediving-training-season-guilt, I put my running shoes on and went out to do a round instead of having coffee and cakes at the hotel. The guys were very upset that they did not have their trainers, claiming they would have come along otherwise, but I must say, I did not miss them and had the most beautiful lonely mountain run in a light drizzle. It was just lovely to be out of the city.

The evening brought more drinking, till four, followed by a stunning sunny day, simply a perfect end to the season. Now it is time to get focused though, since I do have some hope to hit new depths pretty soon. In fact, the mediterranean freediving meeting is coming up, and I will be out in Greece, reporting on all the nonsense the various freedivers get up to.

Going off to do some lungstreches right now. Party mode is over. Honest!

Aspen videos

2010-03-28T06:45:00.000-07:00

Carving in Aspen 2010 from Anna von Boetticher on Vimeo.

Here is a bit of proof that not all of the carving pictures I have posted are fake. Watching this makes me want to go back to Aspen on the next best flight, and green with envy for Jörg and Andy, who are both back there right now, laying out the turns. Evil, evil men! It's not alright. At all.

Watching this also reminds that there is plenty of room for improvement, hence another reason to yearn for the slopes. It's floating hairballs at the Richmond swimming pool for me instead...sniff...

Now if you would like to see how it's really done, check out all these fantastic riders in Remo's video:

WCS 2010 SILVRETTA NOVA from eberle remo on Vimeo.

Clouds? Just get above them.

2010-03-19T05:29:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, it’s boring – I promise, snowboarding season is nearly over. We did have one last great event though: the world carving session (WCS) in Europe – held this year in Montafon, Austria. Amazingly, although the forecast had predicted minus ten degrees and snowfall for the entire weekend, we ended up with three days of sunshine. We secretely think that Simon, who did a great job at organizing 200 snowboarders to happily carve the mountain with zero confusion (unheard of, I know!), has had a hand in fixing the weather, too.

Simon’s problem is, he now has the job, and after the event is before the event, after all. He also made a crucial mistake in publishing his mobile number to us. Putting „only for urgent matters and emergencies“ next to it did not do him any good. He should have known that to discover what time the first lift goes up is a terribly urgent matter to a carver, and not finding the pizza place is a class A emergency. The (very excitable) guy responsible for marketing the ski area loved us so much, he wants to get 500 people in next year. If Simon goes missing in action come October, it will be because 500 people have started calling him to find out which B&B has heated boot dryers. Here he is, having his first meal in relative peace, after it’s all over:

Good luck next year Simon. Oh and I was wondering: can you recommend a hotel with hairdryers and a spa?

We got the drinking bit ouf the way in the hotel bar on the night of our arrival, so the rest of the weekend was spent in a lessening state of hangover and some brilliant carving. I had a great time seeing a whole load of girls out looking good, and hugely enjoyed four time world champion Ursula Bruhin’s race technique clinic. It was a lot how I used to ride, a style Remo and Jörg have been busy beating out of me: point your body downhill and GO! Lovely. I might have lost rotation again in the process...oh well. Jörg? Remo? Heeeelp!

Brilliant weekend, lots of great riders, lots of fun. Diving season is about to begin, so I am off to Egypt in April. Jörg and the guys have been busy twisting my arm and convincing me to come along to the carving masters in Sölden, which may be complicated as I arrive back from Dahab on Friday night before the event. Hmmm. I may fly there directly with my monofin and a bag full of bikinis. After all, it’s May, so it should be warm on the Glacier...right?

Aspeeen!!

2010-02-19T06:42:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's that time of the year again. All thoughts of diving have been wiped from my mind as soon as the first snow fell sometime in November and were instantly replaced by yearnings for a different kind of paradise: Aspen, Colorado. This was my third trip over there, and I am not getting tired of the 26 hour journey at all. In fact, take me there, anytime. Right now would be just fine by me.

We were greeted by the hotel driver with complaints about the lack of snow. I don't think any of these guys have ever been skiing in Europe. Lack of snow to them means that you can't ski the highland bowl in hip deep powder. There was not a bit of ice in sight on the slopes, which were in fantastic condition, as always. Jörg Egli and his pure boarding crew had put 37 snowboarders into the Molly Gibson Lodge again, who hit the slopes in time for the first lift every morning, and did their best to destroy the runs with lots of deep carves before lunch.

After an easy start at Buttermilk mountain we headed out to Highlands next. Taking the lift up to the very top brought memories of a very tough hike up to the highland bowl the previous year, and Jörg sure did drop hopeful comments all along the way, trying to see if he could get someone to take up the challenge. He was a bit half hearted, though, so we were saved from this adventure for now - mostly by a lack of snow. If I am to climb up to nearly four thousand meters, permanently on the brink of fainting from lack of oxygen, I at least want to be rewarded by a fantastic powder run. So instead of hiking, we stuck to taking some nice pictures with the (admittedly beautiful) bowl in the background. My favourite one is this one of Anja and me, both looking all sporty and like we are just going to sprint up there easily:

Of course, as soon as Jörg sees two blond girls and a camera, he has to get in the middle:

Now Jörg is looking all sporty here, too. It's the helmet. Just before this picture was taken, Anja and I rode with him up the chairlift. He sat on the right, and Anja and I had to both sit all the way over to the left, but the chair was still down at his side. "Muscle is heavier than fat" said the man. What fat? Anyway, he is apparently in best shape ever, but had to take a break towards the end of the week, to "rest his knee". Hmmm.

I had a lot of fun riding with Anja, it's great to have another carver female in this macho sport. Who else can understand that it is a shame yet lucky at the same time that we are hardboot riders, since the designers have discovered that soft boots can be made to look cute, which would result in more shoe (or boot) buying and endless outfit-options-anxiety! Anke, Anja and I are going to have a great time at the world carving session in Austria, we might have to develop a few girly moves, too. Meanwhile, I was feeling well prepared and strong from the Wolkenstein bootcamp, and ready to try out my new style on the Aspen snow. There was some progress made, thank god - there is nothing like a photographer, or, even worse, a guy with a video camera, to show you how you are not at all looking as hot as you think. Here I am, thinking I am well on my way:

Oh well. Room for improvement, is all I can say. I kind of knew that things were not quite right yet, when I kept having this big bruise on the left side of my bottom. Checking with some of the pure boarding hot shots, it was soon clear that their pants were worn down at the hip/side instead. Here we are back at Remo's lessons of "rotation, rotation, rotation". You know you have rotated enough when the bruise appears on you hipbone, or when your brand new skipants look like this:

I spent an afternoon riding with Andy, who was filming, so I was giving it my best effort. After a couple of runs I began to feel that my left leg was freezing, and when I checked, I realized that I had worn down my pants and gathered a thick layer of ice and snow inside. Andy took the above picture of me - I'm clearly feeling all smug and happy for finally having destroyed my trousers. Note how the hole is in the right spot, which is because I was doing this all day long:

It is so nice to get something right, occasionally. We were of course not in Aspen to just have fun on our own. It is a serious time of the year: the World Carving Session. Carvers arrived from all over the world and cleared some of the runs of skiers. I got to ride with Dan from Canada again, as well as Steve, both fellow highland bowl adventurers and equally happy to miss out this year, I think. Ken was here, too, and he is still doing the tightest turns ever, it's impossible to follow the guy's line. Dan was going for it full on and threw himself at the pure boarding style, which ended up in an equally big hole in his trousers. He was heard singing to himself: "pants on the ground, watcha gotta do is get your pants on the ground.." while riding along. When asked his age, he pretended to us girls that he was sixty years old, but we are convinced that he is pulling our leg, and doing a reverse adjust-your-age thing: If you tell everyone you're ten years older than you really are, they will all go: wow! You look so young! He was up to some tricks this year, too, chasing us through the trees at Snowmass when we had a day with some fresh snow - it was some of the most fun I have had in a long time.

In the second week things took a turn for the worse, when I developed a toothache that quickly became impossible to ignore. A visit to the dentist confirmed that things were bad, with a massive infection, so I was on antibiotics and lots of painkillers right away. Somehow, the stars had conspired to give us dental disaster week: Anja's husband Ray joined me in the toothache hell and after hoping it would all go away for a while, much like me, gave in and faced the fact that he was in major dental trouble, too. He was a bit smarter than I was, though, and when the dentist suggested a prescription for painkillers, he immediately said yes, please. He was put on Vicodin, which was rather funny: Ray is an awesome rider who comes screaming down the mountain on his Virus board, much in the manner of a black menace. When I saw him in the bar after consumption of said Vicodin, he moved slowly and smiled sweetly at everyone, looking a bit like he was floating on a pink fluffy cloud. I have a feeling I might have missed something funky by sticking to regular drugs...

In the middle of all this, my favourite Canadian dentist carver Dr. Steve Buck arrived. When I told him the state I was in, he looked seriously distressed, and said: "Oh no. You can't do that around me!" I was under the impression that he was positively upset because he couldn't fix us. He really was of no use at all, which is even worse since he manages to look like one of those rare dentists into whose hands you would gladly put yourself with complete faith. I have been wondering why this is. I don’t think being a great carver or wearing the loudest jacket on the mountain can be reasons for inspiring a possibly ill-judged sense of trust in others. Maybe it is his size, him being rather tall? We suggested to him that he should fix all our problems in the afternoons next year, and sell the whole thing to his wife as a business trip, which I still think is a great idea.

Inspite of pain and drugs, we were up there carving all day every day. Once again we had Remo chasing us with a camera, doing a whole load of filming whenever possible. You may remember that last year, I was chided for my outfit, which did not transfer well to film and, according to Jörg and Remo, looked like I was wearing a curtain. This year, faced with a choice of jackets striped in lilac, grass green and turquoise, I finally gave up the search and went for all black. This was not to Remo's liking, either, and boy did I hear about it! Now that I have destroyed the pants and the jacket is on its' way out, it looks like I need to start again. Jörg has suggested that he will be choosing my next outfit, which is just fine by me, since then it will be his fault if Remo the cameraman is not happy. Apart from filming, Remo has been riding fantastically well, I just love trying to follow him around the mountain. I managed to catch him doing an amazing wheelie, in one of the rare moments where we got to turn the camera back on him, which will hopefully be on youtube soon, so I can post a link.

Back in Berlin, the dentist did not have anything good to say about the mess I was in and put me on even more antibiotics, which means I now go to sleep as soon as I sit down anywhere. This is not a good state to be in when the German Championships in the pool are on tomorrow. Once again, I will be there to coach others. This is even more annoying, since my long break from training has lulled me into into a vague feeling of actually wanting to do some statics!

Finally made it to the diveshow

2010-01-28T02:47:00.000-08:00

For some reason, the largest watersports tradeshow in the world (called "Boot", as in boat) is happening once a year in Germany. Amongst fancy yachts and tons of beach bum gear, there is an entire hall full of diving related things. It’s a big and quite famous event in the German scuba diving calendar, and, so far, I had never been there. This year, I was invited by Johnson Outdoors, who run Scubapro, Subgear and Uwatec, and have recently provided me with lots of fun when they gave me the Galileo computer to take down on the sled. The idea was, I should give some presentations over the weekend and hang out on the Scubapro stand to chat to people and answer questions, and, preferably, turn them ALL into freedivers! I’m working on it.

It quickly became apparent what a beginner I am at this kind of thing when somebody asked me for an autograph card. I don’t even have a business card! Why anyone would want my autograph on anything beats me. The show was great, lots of fancy stands with shiny gear, which my tech diving heart loves. I also got to meet famous tech diver Mark Ellyatt, fellow Scubapro guest, and have bored him to tears all weekend by asking him endless questions, probably exactly the same ones any fool who has ever been below sixty meters asks him at every show. He was very patient, though, and smiled sweetly at all the bearded divers who came up to him to ask, in German, where they could get their free mug. That’s what you get for wearing a name badge and looking friendly and aproachable.

All the talk of diving aside, it is still snowboarding season, so I am off to Aspen, Colorado, on Sunday – sore legs are sure to follow. I am so excited to be going, I am even looking forward to the 17 hour journey. I fear I might be a little addicted. I tortured fellow freediver William Winram, who used to own a snowboardshop, by sending him a nice carving picture, to try and convince him to join us on the slopes. He said he needed to see that photo about as much as a hole in the head. Sorry Will!

Snowy season

2010-01-17T14:25:00.000-08:00

Right, it’s been a while. This is due to the usual winter season zero training situation. I am happy to report that nothing has changed: against all plans to better myself, I once again stopped pretense at physical activity six weeks before Christmas. That is, if you don’t count the eight hour a day giftwrapping marathon at the bookshop. Water? Pooltraining? Freediving? Memories from a distant past.

An ominous feeling of trouble ahead (in the shape of the snowboarding season) got me out of the house for a lovely snowy Christmas run on the 25th, but after that: nothing. I was very nearly saved from bruises and pain by a blizzard that moved in in time to stop airplanes from getting out of Berlin for two days (see above), but in the end I made it to the Dolomites last Saturday, to face up to Joerg Egli’s relentless and brutal week of Pure Boarding punishment.

Waiting for me in Wolkenstein were not only Joerg and 29 other riders, but my new weapon of choice: the black Diamond. This is what Joerg created out of the prototype he let me ride in Aspen last year, and which he wouldn’t sell to me, arguing that he still had to tweak it a bit. And boy, did he tweak it. It simply is outrageously fast. I spent the first day trying to master the beast, which one can only say was riding with me rather than the other way round. I stuck to the back of the group, trying to avoid being seen messily crashing around the mountain by my fellow riders, who were all looking intimidatingly good already.

Come to Wolkenstein and one thing is for sure: you will soon regret every day spent without exercise. This is how the pure boarding carving week works: get up at 7:00am. Be outside the lift at 08:15, waiting for the doors to open so as to be on the very first chair/gondola. Make the first tracks down the freshly groomed slope by 08:35. Don’t ever stop on the piste. RUN into the next lift, ride up, ride down, RUN into the next lift...and so on. If Joerg feels gracious, you are allowed a sit-down lunchbreak of between 30-40min. If not, it’s standing outside a Kiosk to have a piece of chocolate and some water. It’s snowboarding bootcamp, with a lot of laughs thrown in, especially at the bar in the evenings. This deceptively peaceful picture shows the only coffee break we had all week: on our final afternoon!

After the first day, I was unable to walk down any stairs. I tried my best to hide this, but Joerg caught me navigating the three steps down to the dining room and instantly knew what shape I was in. Rarely have I known such a level of self-induced pain. To top this, the toughest day of the week was next, where we covered an incredible amount of distance and never stopped, since it became quite clear that we were chancing it for making it back across all the valleys. Fact is, we didn’t – a ride down to the last gondola in the gathering dusk brought us to a stop when the lift guys wouldn’t let us on anymore. So it was a hike back up and a 100Euro taxiride! Thankfully split between nine of us. To give you an idea: we set a new pure boarding record, riding down just over eleven thousand meters of altitude in one day and covering a distance of 100km. No surprise the legs were aching. Fortunately, there is such a thing as muscle memory, and I got progressively stronger over the week. I even began to feel that I might yet master the board, which has the most brilliant edge hold on ice I have ever experienced. This is a backside turn I accidentally got right, on a seriously icy steep:

Bliss. Now my muscles are recovering, but I have a large range of bruises. At least freediving is a no-contact-sport!

Lessons learned and aching legs

2009-11-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

This is it: the freediving competition season is finally over for the year. I cooked dinner for Daan, Eric and Martin on Friday night (we were all in the long night of apnea the next day), which was very nice, since I was able to do all the moaning that is part of my preparation, and they listened to my growing list of excuses with calm and understanding. I won’t say much about the competition itself, except that it did not go as I wished, since I had a splitting headache and a fever. I did learn from previous mistakes, though, and came up safe and clean at 107m dnf.

We had fun watching Daan do a beautiful 169m Dynamic, taking the Dutch record from Eric. After that, I went on to coach Jesper in the evil discipline 16x50. Since Jesper had made a tactical error earlier and had not checked what Polish man Robert had done in dynamic, he was now behind in points and needed to give it his all to try and still win the competition. My job was to make him dive every 48 seconds. He took around 35 seconds per 50m, leaving him less than 15 seconds to breathe. After the fifth dive, he started to look kind of bad, so I switched him to 50sec intervals, and then pushed him as hard as I could – amazingly, he did what I told him to and came in at 12:59, looking a bit dead, I have to say. After all that, he still lost, which I (no mercy) teased him with as much as possible for the rest of the night.

Coach Martin, in a moment of boredom and, one might say, madness, had had a bright idea a few weeks earlier and entered us under the team name “Hypoxic Runners” into the Berlin Team Marathon for the day after the competition. This took place at the beautiful old airport, Tempelhof, and had a total of 1100 teams entered.

Here are four of the five hpoxic runners: Elisabeth, Martin, Jesper and I:

Thinking that Jesper is a fit athlete and seasoned runner, we had asked him if he would like to join us and take a 10km section of the run, and he said yes without hesitation. Then, after having done a killer 16x50, he announced that he had not run in twenty years! A 3km on the running machine a couple of weeks before left him unable to walk the next day. This was not encouraging news for our overall result. In fact, we were getting worried about making it inside the 4.5 hours maximum time allowed. Still, my offer of swapping my 5k section for his 10k was instantly declined. It’s a man thing, I believe.

Having jumped out of bed far too early, we established our team base at the Tempelhof airport and got ready to send Martin off to run the first section of 12,195k. He returned in 1hour2min, which was a great start, and handed over to Steffen, who discovered his competition gene and pushed himself to run 10k in 52min.

Here I am with Steffen, hypoxic runner number five

I was next and need to write a letter of complaint to Polar: minutes before I was due to start, I discovered that my nice new training watch does not have a stopwatch function! So I arrived back at 30min8sec, passed over to Jesper, who was nicely nervous by now. Getting ready, Martin watched him in amazement as he removed the price tag from his brand new running shoes! He arrived back after the first 5k round looking like it was hurting, but in a good time of just under half an hour. Here he is, passing the plane in his shiny new shoes:

This had us all thinking that the second round would surely finish him off, and we would not see him again for a long while. There we did not count on quite how competitive he can be, since much to our surprise he crossed the line, close to death but breathing, after just 1hour1min. Elisabeth had the last 5k to run, and stayed just under 30min, taking us to the finish in a total time of 3:56:and a bit.
It was a fantastic event, with a total of 1100 teams entered. Since we all have the competition gene, we immediately decided to do this again next year, and are hoping to have at least one more freediver’s team to compete against – so get your running shoes ready, guys!

Jesper says his legs are fine. I don’t believe a word of it.

Sled and rain in Athens

2009-11-07T04:47:00.000-08:00

I finally had to give in and face the truth: I was not going to make it to the world championships in the Bahamas, much as I would have liked to go. Fellow sad no-goers Liv and George managed to talk Stavros into rescuing us from the approaching winter blues and organise a mini training week near Athens. We were joined by Dave Tranfield and Greg, whom Stavros recruited during a course, and who had thought freedivers were reasonably normal people until he met us lot.

I was so looking forward to seeing the sun, I happily packed my bag full of all the items a girl needs during such an occasion: a range of bikinis, denim miniskirt, shorts, assortment of flip flops, several pairs of sunglasses, sunscreens, aftersuns, skimpy tops, etc etc. I was just done with all this when my friend Jens called me, to complain about me going off to sunny shores while normal people were stuck back in the rain. He asked me what the weather would be like, and I said, no idea, sunny, of course, what else? Ha! Shouted the man and went to check the forecast on the internet. Well. I detected a hint of glee in his voice as he read out the bad news. They involved such things as rain, clouds, storms, and freezing temperatures. I put the phone down, unpacked my bag and filled it with fleeces and woolly hats.

The week was wonderful, in spite of the rather accurately forecast weather conditions. There was not much to do in the afternoons, so we had nice picnic lunches, hung around drinking tea, read, slept. Stavros and Giota took fantastic care of us, driving us around, cooking us lovely dinners, and generally making sure we were having a great time. Most days, I dived with the sled, doing head down variable to 60m, to practise equalization. This was the fastest I have ever gone: I reached 60m in 27sec the first time round! What was most beautiful, though, was diving the mini blue hole they have near Athens. It is more like a black hole, really, as it looks completely dark from above. There is a down current which means the descent feels amazing, simply effortless. At the bottom, the current disappears into a tunnel that has been blocked off to stop stupid divers from going in there. Foivos, who was looking after us lot with amazing safety diving, made me do statics down there, since he has promised to take me spearfishing next time and this was part of the training regime. I stayed for up to one minute, which was a lot nicer than doing a static in the pool, I tell you.

Here is a video Stavros filmed:

Next weeend it’s the Berlin long night of apnea. I have announced DNF. I do not want to do anything at the moment, in fact, I have been overcome by a great feeling of laziness. Anyone want to come and give me a cold? Please?

Note to self: stick to the plan!

2009-10-04T10:35:00.001-07:00

This would be a moment for my friend Roland. He would just smile calmly and see everything confirmed that he believes he knows about me, and unfortunately, he is right. Seems like I can be a bit impatient at times, and get overexcited if the diving is going well. Now Roland is forever telling me to chill out, relax, calm down, let the diving come to me. I am beginning to see that he might have a point. Note the sheepish look on my face in the picture, with Martin, and also the lack of Champagne.

It would also be a moment for my fabulous tech diving instructor, Aaron Bruce. One of the first and most important lessons he taught us was “plan the dive, dive the plan”. This is an iron rule when you are going down to the depths of the ocean on trimix, with the invisible but potentially deadly decompression ceiling above your head. It means you are going to plan what you are doing meticulously, and you are going to stick to this – no cutting corners, and most importantly, and here we have thing that would have served me well yesterday: no getting carried away.

So here we were, at the RMC in Wiesbaden. The pool is wonderful, bright and spacious, and has a great vibe. I was suffering from the usual nerves, or maybe not quite, since this time I was busy feeling nervous about the dynamic no fins dive while I was breathing up for static. Nothing like being stressed out by a discipline that is not due for another five hours whilst listening to the countdown for another one. As things were, I had overcome my static low point form earlier in the week and popped up at 5:24, where I stopped because I did not want to tire myself out too much. Did I just say that? I did a static of nearly five and a half minutes and stopped early? Incredible. I am still trying to understand how this has happened. I will share the secret with you as soon as I have figured out which of the yoghurts that I eat is responsible for this mysterious change.

After coaching Martin I was off duty and had five hours to sit around and get more and more stressed out. Talking with Eric van Riet Paap later in the restaurant, he claims that I did not look nervous at all. This comes as a surprise to me, as I am always under the impression that I have “Oh SHIT” written across my forehead in giant letters. I guess he did not hear me say “I want to go home. Can I go home?” to anyone who cared to ask me anything that day. Having been abandoned by my Danish team, who all opted to stay away with flimsy excuses such as work and illness, I found help from Olga Martinez Alvarez, who came and kept me company 20min before my dive. This is very important, as I need to have someone to moan at, which gets rid of some of the nervous energy and distracts me from the fact that it’s nearly time to go. Once underway, all nerves were forgotten, as usual. I had the standard moment of wanting to quit at around fifty meters, but I have figured out a perfect way to get myself over that: I just distract myself with making up various reasons for why I came up early. Playing through the different scenarios and actually planning how I am going to explain the chosen one to Martin keeps me busy for at least 25m. Once I have turned at 75, I can usually push on. It all gets interesting after the 100m turn, because this is when I start to get excited about doing a great dive. At this point the plan should have come into play, which was the following: turn at 125, push off, come up - bingo - have record. Just as I practiced in training only a week ago. I stuck to this perfectly, until, and here is where Aaron will be laughing (do NOT get carried away...), I got quite pleased and excited by the fact that I had pushed off the wall and was still swimming along. It was only six meters! Anyway, I surfaced at 133m, totally forgot to do any decent breathing, took off my goggles and noseclip and squeezed out “I am ok” through a fit of the giggles brought on by the fact that I was already sinking with no hope of recovery. I was still laughing when the two safety divers held me and did not bang my head against the side of the pool in frustration at my own stupidity, as one might have expected. The first thing I said when I was done laughing was: “Oh no. Now I have to do this AGAIN!”

Here we are. Instead of having a party month, as I had planned, I will be training – again – for the long night of Apnea in Berlin, which is coming up in six weeks’ time. Let’s see which lesson I will be learning during that competition.

Counting tiles

2009-10-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

I have been busy counting tiles in the pool again. It was hard to get started with this after a week of counting the (admittedly few) groupers in the Greek sea. Funnily enough, motivation for pool training was at an all time low – weird, that. A phone call to Elisabeth confirmed that she was in much the same state, so I hatched a clever plan, kidnapped her boyfriend (coach Martin) and drove back to Aarhus for a much needed four-day-bootcamp. Here I am with training buddy Elisabeth:

We kicked off by going to Spanien. Who would have thought? Somehow, going to Spain to do some static does not sound so bad. Turns out it is a beautiful old swimming pool, right in the centre of Aarhus, where they are mad enough to let a bunch of freedivers do what they like after closing time – just switch off the lights when you leave! Doing some technique training for the dreaded no fins soon made me forget that I was supposed to be in Spain. Martin and Elisabeth were having a lot of fun watching me turn. It would seem that it is impossible to mess up the turns in no fins. Trust me, it is not. I managed to get my bottom sticking out of the water as well as dragging my chest along the tiles. Don’t ask me to explain. Coach Martin was in a state of shock and actually at a loss as to what to do with me for a moment. Next, we did some statics in the whirlpool, sadly without the whirling, which would have been nice. I like changing things ever so often, so opted for a no warm up max, and much to my surprise, managed 5min without too struggle.

Next day we were back at Elisabeth’s private pool, next to her house, where I did not get to observe the secret to the Danish success stories, since they all just sat in the sauna and chatted away. Stig was there and filmed me, followed by some much needed advice. He kindly picked the four worst things (turns...) and kept the rest to himself, so as not to confuse me too much. Training was alternated with eating lots – Elisabeth and Martin are making me – and fun things such as a run on the beach. What I did not count on was the fact that the beaches have mountains here, and Martin made me run up and down, which positively killed me.

After four days, I felt more or less ready again. Then I went off to London and got distracted by a wild party weekend back in Berlin – out till five in the morning Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night – and somewhere in there the Aarhus bootcamp was lost again. Since then, I have been busy in my Elixia pool, trying to remember how to freedive. The panic moment was Monday, when I could not get past 3:30 in static! Tuesday was acceptable, though, so I am feeling half ready for the Rhein-Main cup on Saturday.

Or am I? Shit.Quietly getting nervous here.

Sailing, cooking, catching dinner

2009-09-18T04:19:00.000-07:00

I had it all planned out. First, train hard, then, compete in Aarhus for two weeks, then, work hard. Something happened to the “work hard” bit, and that something is called William Winram. Here I am, a good girl, at home, not planning any trips for a change, when I get this phone call from Will. A place has become available on a 15m yacht, cruising, diving, teaching (Fred and Will) around the Ionian Sea. Thinking that I would surely be saved by the non-existence of any flights at such short notice, I went online. Ooops.

A few days after the worlds, I found myself on a boat, about to set sail from the Greek Island of Levkas. With me were Fred Buyle, Will, Chris Marshall from New Zealand whom I met in Aarhus, Kattie Lussier and Kate Adams, plus Sam Tanner and Fabrice Enthoven. Fabrice, who managed to keep from us the important information that he owns a bar and a restaurant in Brussels (am on my way), let slip towards the end of the trip that he knows Fred from “the bar” and that he can testify to the fact that Fred knows how to “make good party”. Seems that Fred in the city is quite different from the “I am a healthy, in tune with the elements, sailor, diver, spearfisher” type person that was on display for the students during the week. On consideration, I guess my “London-Kings Road, handbag, high heels, designer shades, now give me my latte” persona has little to do with the saltwater afro hairdo, frayed denim and bikini top woman on the boat, too. Now Will – I think he might just be the same, wherever. Redneck out of the trailerpark, and all that. Never mind, you’ll get it when you meet him. Here is a picture of sailor-Fred:

First job was to make sure we’d be well supplied. When Will and Fred asked who liked to cook, I made a crucial mistake and stuck my hand up, followed by another crucial mistake in letting the guys go off to buy vegetables on their own. They returned with random items, including, in Greece, on a sailboat, 36°C in the shade, a CABBAGE! Why anyone would want to eat cabbage anyway is a mystery to me, but on a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea? Needless to say, I ignored said item, which turned into a bit of an accident when the thing went off and made the whole fridge reek in the most evil fashion later on.

We had a few incidents involving apnea brain on this trip, the first one in the supermarket, when we all agreed that we needed salt and pepper, but no one put it in the cart. My excuse is, I just did a 6:12 static, which has clearly reduced my brainpower by 50%. It turned out that we needed at least two heads for any mildly complicated task, usually me and Fred. Examples included: turning off the alarm on the autopilot, operating the winch on the mainsail, operating the drain for the shower (this needed three people), and, the worst, switching on the strip light above the stove. I was trying to keep this one quiet, but Fred had no mercy on me and let it out, although I was holding his mouth shut as long as possible: he found me cursing over the pots, trying to turn on what looked like a lamp to me, but was in fact – this is so embarrassing - a blind. You can imagine the hilarity that ensued. Had I not been in charge of dinner, and therefore a VIP on the boat, I think it would have been a lot worse.

Before we got in the water for the first time, we were made to go through a Winram/Buyle tradition: we held a moment of silence. For all the people on the tube in London, Paris, Tokio. I think this is a very appropriate thing and am happy to give the poor people in rush hour a brief thought. We soon got on with it, though.The purpose of the trip was to teach us some aquaticity, which was wonderful. I have learned the spearo duck dive, and am leaving the surface a lot more quietly now, which is well necessary if hunting for anything in Greece. Fish here don’t live above 20m, so Chris and I were taken out to spearfish into the deep, blue water by Fred. The guys showed me how to swim with the gun so I wouldn’t shoot myself in the head or foot, then let me head on down, out of sight.

I tell you, I was not expecting to go looking for groupers as deep as 32m when I came on the boat. I did take a couple of shots, but missed, of course. Might have something to do with squeezing my eyes shut when pulling the trigger. Chris did not fare much better, and he has no excuse, being an experienced hunter, after all, and a man. He did point out that fish in New Zealand live above 15m, but it seemed he had no problem spending stupidly long bottom times down below 25m. In the end, it was up to Fred to show us how it’s done and catch our dinner. Here is a photo of me, stalking. Since we did not find any fish anywhere, I posed for Chris who was out with his camera instead. Just imagine that this is at 32m.

Will could not join in the fishing expeditions, because he was unable to pull the trigger. This is a longish story. Basically, we broke him on the first day of sailing. First, he tried to rescue an escaping rope (or sheet – sailors are weird) and got nasty rope burn all over his fingers. Then, he tried to rescue the escaping anchor chain and dislocated a rib, on the other side, so both arms did not really work anymore. Since I am first aid trained (it is a scuba instructor thing), I felt it was my duty to go in search of some disinfectant. The first aid kit produced nothing but an ancient bottle of Iodine. This they still use in surgery in hospitals, I believe, but usually only after they give you the general anaesthetic. Will asked me to “just pour”, so we went to the back off the boat and got on with it. There was a moment delay, so we all thought it was not the stuff that burns, after all, until we were treated to some pretty good screams seconds later. Chris had produced his camera from somewhere and documented the whole thing in a series of pictures that show an amazing range of grimaces, including Will biting his arm. I felt bad, is all I can say. Anyway, I could post one of these photos here, but have decided that it was a far too private moment, and am going for the following image instead:

Here are Will and I, looking kind of cute together, I think. Will’s wife gets terribly seasick, thus leaving the field open to us to flirt shamelessly with her husband. All my efforts were wasted, though, and this picture was the best I managed. I think I am losing my touch. It is tough on a boat, when a girl does not have important items such as spiky heels to assist her.

The week was just beautiful, I love sailing. It is a wonderful combination with freediving. Everyone learned loads, and I think even Will believes that my no fins technique might not be completely hopeless, anymore. Unfortunately, I will now have to go and practice this awful discipline. Maybe I’ll just go spearfishing instead. My only problem is, I just can’t load the guns, so I will have to find some male buddy to do this for me. Chris and Fred seem to think that this will be very easy.

Right. Want to hand a blond girl a speargun? Anyone?

Guide to worldchampionships

2009-08-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this very nice video the guys from Aarhus made about the worlds. It shows the facilities, the divers, the competition. Right at the end, the girl nearly leaping straight out of the pool during the static competition, that is me, having just been told by Giota that I did 6:12...:-)

Record, then party

2009-08-23T02:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had the pleasure to sleep in, since the dynamic finals were not until four in the afternoon. Having woken up early anyway, I came across Japanese freediver Hanaka wandering around aimlessly on the way to the supermarket – she was in the B-final with me, and couldn’t sit still anymore, either. To give my head something to focus on other than yet another official top, I went over to the pool to watch the end of the CMAS competition. They have been running their world championships alongside ours, which has been very interesting. I arrived in time to see Stig, who has not trained for two years (information confirmed by fellow Aarhus freedivers), do a 238m dive, followed by the surface protocol in less than five seconds. I wonder what he eats for breakfast. He got disqualified, though, because he forgot to drop the little marker CMAS use to check the distance achieved.

As the B-final was approaching, I was feeling less and less like diving, and more and more like having a party. Danish Maria was in a similar state. We both just wanted to have beer, without the diving. We spent the last half hour psyching each other up: Just two more minutes. Then beer. Have to beat x by at least ten meters. Then beer. Or: beer at two minutes to official top? This passed the time until Johan arrived to coach me, and took care to calm down my nerves just the right amount. As soon as I was swimming, I felt good, and even though the noseclip came off again, I swam 164m, beating my record from the day before by ten meters. Even surfacing to see judge Linda, again, with the piss-off card, didn’t bother me anymore. I was at the party.

There was just one small detail to take care of: coaching my training buddy Elisabeth in the A-final. She just swam and swam, towards the end mostly with her arms. Then she came up totally clean at more than 180m, which was amazing and got her into fourth place over all. The atmosphere during the finals was fantastic, everyone cheering and shouting as the eight divers were heading towards the medals. Now that it is all over, I can honestly say that as much as I did not like freediving in the pool, I have enjoyed these world championships enormously. We had some more suffering to go through at a slightly endless awards ceremony, with flags rising to the ceiling while hymns were being played. Since Natalia won three gold medals, we heard the Russian one three times, and it is loooooong! All very moving, but torture for a bunch of freedivers who had not eaten anything since breakfast. This we need to work on next time. Just throw us the medals, then give us food, then beer. This did fortunately follow eventually, and we spent the rest of the night dancing around in gym hall much in the fashion of a school disco, which was kind of cool. In the end, the security guard kicked us out.

A lack of Raki at the party means that I am feeling fine this morning, and will go off in search of the beach in a second. I heard that the sea is around here, somewhere.

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

2009-08-21T14:10:00.001-07:00

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!

Murphy’s law

2009-08-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

When we arrived at the pool this morning we were faced with some shocking news. Here we were, thinking that we were in Denmark, a lovely place with a kind and welcoming population throughout. Turns out was is not quite true, after all, and we had somehow been transported to a far rougher climate, where people break into places and steel 50 000 Euros worth of equipment over night. All the cameras were gone, the big TV screens where results were posted, every computer in the place, everything. What amazed all of the competitors was the level of calm kept by the organizers in this situation, and the competition got under way with only one hour delay, so no good excuse material there, really.

Now I know how I have been going on and on about how I don’t like static. Although I have been busy convincing myself that I feel the love, this is still not quite the case. My cunning plan (my friend Roland might have called it wishful thinking) was to make it to the final in dynamic no fins, thus to have a perfectly good reason to ditch the static, thus getting out of doing any nasty statics during this event. As things go, it all turned out differently, and I ended up holding my breath for 5:40 this morning, much helped by Jesper, who calmed down the rushes of nerves that were hitting me while I was having my contractions. I had asked him to also protect me from judge Linda, who, as Murphy’s law would have it, actually ended up in my lane this time. She is wearing a card around her neck that says “piss off” on it, which she shows to the athlete when she simply cannot find any reason to give him a red card. This I can live with.

Next, I went on to coach my training buddy Elisabeth, who has had her brother on her heels with 5:19, so my mission was to make sure that she would beat him. This was easily accomplished, so I was telling her that she should beat me, next, and she went on to do 6:02, thus pushing me out of the A final into the B final. Oh well. Bad news is, I will have to do static again, tomorrow morning. Oh no!

A new experience

2009-08-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo of Daan, who is on safety duty, and me. I have been busy over the last couple of days making sure I was good friends with any safety diver I came across, which turned out to have been more important than I bargained for at around 17:23.

I woke up with a case of nerves so bad that I found it hard to actually eat breakfast and had to force down every bit of porridge. I spent the whole morning going round saying “I’m so nervous, I’m so nervous” to random people, from whom I got varying degrees of sympathy, probably depending on how busy they were being nervous themselves. It was very nice to come across former (trying to get him to un-retire, but no luck so far) top freediver Peter Peterson, who gave me some good advice, although it didn’t help in the end, since as any other stupid athlete (believe me, there a lot of us, just ask judge Linda) I decided not to take it. As I was breathing up for my dive, I started to feel better, though, and as soon as I pushed off the wall the dive was running as smooth as you like. It all felt just as it did two weeks ago, when I did a nice and clean 127m in training. I was kind of aiming for something along those lines, especially since it was looking like 125m was possibly going to get me into the A final. Well. Which self respecting (and blond) athlete would not go for it under those circumstances. Not many, as the many black outs and LMC’s today prove.

Anyway, so there I was, thinking I am still nice and strong when I came up to do the 100m turn. A few meters later, I started feeling a bit odd, but decided (blond) that I was just imagining this and everything just had to be fine. At 115m I changed my mind and came up – about five meters too late. Apparently I reached the surface, took a look and put my face back in the water. It seems that I can’t even blame that one on coach Jesper - I made a crucial mistake by not having a copout ready before the dive. If Linda had been judging me I could have blamed her, since she has been stressing me out by threatening me with red cards, but I had Panagiota, who is one of my favourite judges ever, and was genuinely upset to have to show me anything but a white card.

The positive side to all this is, since I am now not in any final, I will have tomorrow evening off, and don’t have to do this whole no fins thing again. The bad part is that now I have to do a really good static. If anything goes wrong with that, it will definitely be Jesper’s fault, who has been kind enough to offer to coach me and take the blame. Unless I have Linda as my judge, that is, in which case it will all be down to her.

Good. Now I can go to sleep calmly, having all my excuses well prepared and in place, ready to be used as required.

Training at my first pool worldchampionship

2009-08-18T03:48:00.000-07:00

It is time to put all the training I did in chlorinated water to good use, and to make all the beers I did not drink work for me. Martin and I drove to Aarhus on Friday, with a car miraculously filled up to the top with random items. Saturday we went straight to the pool, and I got my first taste of a 50m lane in about two years. It’s a bit odd, like it just seems to go on and on forever, but fortunately for me the middle is marked, so I can work my small blond brain halfway, then to the end, then halfway, and so on. All seems to be well, except my monofin technique, which athletes watching from across the pool could spot as still requiring some work. I’m on it.

Sunday morning we did some static, my favourite. Amazingly, instead of reverse training this (i.e. getting worse by the day) as I usually do, it has actually been improving and I have been consistently over five minutes, which is a nice surprise. Even better, it seems that I have finally found out what the problem with my static has been all along: According to Linda (who is here to judge) what makes me come up is not the urge to breathe, but the urge to talk! So I have been training all these nasty CO2 tables, wondering why nothing was ever getting any better, and it was all a total waste of time. I am very grateful to Linda for finally solving this mystery for me. She (together with Lotta) was my freediving instructor at the very beginning, so she is really the reason why I am here at all, doing horrible statics. She is still the best at spotting anyone’s problems and recently helped me realize that I am a muppet and need to pretend to have a mask on my face in order to equalize with a nose clip, but that is another story. Back to static: it seems that all I need to do is figure out a way to have convincing conversations in my head, thus overcoming the urge to come up to talk to people, thus getting over 6:07 to break the German record. Simple.

The German team of Ilka, Barbara, me, Ulli, and Martin (Legat) has been joined by a new member: Sergio Martinez-Alvarez , who has brought along his lovely wife Olga. She is busy doing safety for all of us, plus a few other athletes, such as Carlos Coste and the rest of the Venezuelan team. Sergio is a bit excited at the moment because there are so many fancy freedivers around everywhere. Unfortunately he will soon realize that we are all no more fancy than he is, and then he will not be impressed anymore by anything I tell him. At the moment, he is still listening to me, so I have had a little talk with him and told him to let go of the brake (advice Stig once gave to Jesper, and look what happened), so he did a pb in static by almost forty seconds right away. I am sure he will have a great competition, and most of all, a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, I have been training with Elisabeth, who has been doing some very nice statics, too. We decided that I would coach her in the competition, since I know exactly how to lie to her convincingly. I still need to figure out who is going to tell me that I am at four minutes when in fact I have gone past five, and will be hunting around for a coach at the athlete’s meeting later on. Performance announcements for dynamic no fins have to be made in a couple of hours. I am going to spend some time on my bed now, figuring out what to put down and quietly getting nervous. I think I will go for 105m, thus forcing myself to turn at hundred.

By the way, I forgot to mention that Linda is of course the best looking judge around, by a long way.

Oh shit. Nervous already.

Turning into a poolrat

2009-08-05T08:23:00.001-07:00

Seriously. I think I am growing green hair, produced entirely out of Chlorine. Since I returned from Greece, I have been a very good freediver and followed a well prepared, regular training plan. The only thing wrong with it, to my mind, is the lack of open water. The reason behind it was the brief panic that seized me when I came home and realized there were only five weeks left till the pool world championships in Denmark. Fortunately, Elisabeth Kristoffersen was in Berlin for a whole month, staying with Martin, and ready to get going. We discussed said training plan over dinner, and ended up with the following: Monday rest, Tuesday dynamic, Wednesday static and dynamic no fins, Thursday dynamic, Friday rest, Saturday no fins, Sunday morning static, Sunday evening the evil interval training spinning class, with breath holds on the bike.

Thinking that I was well trained and adapted after all, and expecting to be pretty much where I left off after my record attempt, I hit the pool with Elisabeth for our first session. It was a shock. It appears that deep diving broke my pool diving. My body didn’t remember a thing. Swimming with the fin felt awful, being in the pool felt awful, holding my breath felt awful, doing a decent turn was impossible. Five weeks seemed like a very short time. The week did not improve, in fact the low point was yet to come when I came up at barely four minutes in the first static session, having started contractions at around two minutes. I blame it on Jesper. While I was floating there, trying to drift off and relax, I was suddenly thinking about his advice for static: that you have to love the horrible feeling and welcome the fight. Merely thinking about the horrible feeling obviously ended any ideas of relaxation for me. At least things were not much better for Elisabeth either, so we had the comfort of moaning together afterwards in the showers, which is the real reason why Martin has to wait so long for us girls to be ready.

My initial plan had been to start off with a max in each discipline, but considering my disastrous performances, I decided to leave it be and focus on doing several long, but sub-max dives, trying to recover a shred of technique. In DNF I was sometimes using 3.5 strokes, sometimes four, sometimes 4.5, sometimes five! It was chaos, to say the least. As we got into the second week, both Elisabeth and I decided that the time for messing around was now over and we would focus properly. To do this, we got into the habit of telling each other what our minimum dive was going to be that day. This seems to work very well, at least for me. As soon as I have announced to someone that I am going to do, say two times 100m, I then feel embarrassed enough not to quit. I surprised Martin, who was on safety duty, when we went to train no fins one day: I had told Elisabeth in the changing room that the target was to turn at 75m. Martin was expecting me to do a shortish warm-up dive, but when I was swimming along, I just wanted it all to be over so badly, I went to 84m straight away. This was interesting in some way, as I realized that I could do a fairly long dive without warm-up.

Having got our heads back together, training progressed a lot better into the third week, with some tough cycling on Sunday evenings thrown in – lots of contractions included. The guys in the spinning class are used to us by know, and ignore us when we shout “five, four, three, two, one...!” at each other. Both of us have found that we get extremely lactic on the bike, but it has been getting better every session, so we hope it is good for something. It has to be. Right?

In the pool I was focusing on doing longer and longer dives with no warm up. I am finding that this is building my confidence very much: if I can do 100m no fins after swimming, with no count down or proper breathe-up (and a pb of 113m), it seems to me that more must be possible with good preparation. Meanwhile, Elisabeth was working on her main problem: she lets herself quit sometimes. I think she has definitely fixed this, and did some beautiful dynamics, very much ready for more in Aarhus. It was her final week here last week, and I had planned to go for maxes in DYN and DNF. We took proper rest and set out to do the dives on Tuesday. Waking up in the morning, I had one feeling: I don’t want to go. This was a lot worse than usual, and when we arrived at the pool, I decided not to dive for the first time. It felt strange. I was feeling physically weak, and neither physically or mentally ready to do anything. The plan was to rest for a day and try again on Thursday. Thursday morning came along, I pushed off the wall and immediately felt stressed and tense. Without even realizing it, I was swimming faster than usual, which probably didn’t help matters, as I got lactic legs at 50m and quit at 90m. This was a new and depressing experience for me: so far, I had never quit before reaching the minimum goal I had set myself, no matter how hard it was. This time, though, there was no way I was going to go to 125m and turn. I guess sometimes it is important to know when not to push it, bad as it may feel.

Things have been going surprisingly well in static, of all things. This is mostly due to Martin, who took a new approach to coaching one day and simply tricked me to a pb of 5:27, making me realize that I could fight for over three minutes in the process. Frustrated by my dynamic disaster, I went on to do another pb of 5:41, which pushed Elisabeth to do 5:47, the longest static she has done in a long time. After all, she had to beat me, which just shows that it is great to have a muppet on your heels, chasing you. After some rest over the weekend, I have beaten the dynamic devil and feel that I am back on track. A last max in DNF tomorrow, plus a bit of static training, and I am ready for Aarhus.

I hope.

90m variable weight video

2009-07-12T02:05:00.002-07:00

I got a guy I know to help edit the 90m video. This was interesting, because while we were watching the footage and then getting the dive into sequence, the guy was nearly having a series of heartattacks from sheer excitement. When the film was ready, he could not sit still to watch it, but had to pace around the room. I was kind of realizing then that what I have been doing in Crete is fairly extreme, at least to the normal person. I get so used to it, I don't feel like it is anything very special, after all I was down there and it did not feel extreme to me, at the time. The dive was easy and I was busy being annoyed that I am still not equalizing as well as I feel I should. Also, there are guys all around me there happily popping to those depths without the help of sleds, so I really don't feel like I am diving all that deep.

The whole thing would of course not look anything like as dramatic as it does if it wasn't for Stavros' new safety tool: the depth sounder. You can hear the guys shouting out the depth, which, although I did not have a camera with me all the way down, gives an impression of time passing and makes it quite exciting, I think.

Here it is:

:-)

P.S: I did not kiss everybody, in case you were wondering, although it was nice to be allowed to do so by the head judge.

Gossip & pictures from the Meditteranean Freediving Meeting

2009-07-07T07:50:00.000-07:00

As promised, all the boring news of x-meters done by champion freedivers is now done, and I am ready to come to the real stories. As soon as the last diver was back on shore on Saturday, beers were cracked open as the party season began more or less right away. That evening, we all gathered at the all to familiar Lotos Bar, where things turned out quite mellow, since we managed to hide from the evil Raki-wielding safety divers by going to sit next to the beach.

Still, although there was no singing and dancing going on, before we knew it, it was three in the morning and somehow we were on our way to the nightclub Fortuna. There we encountered said safety team, who, since they couldn’t find us, had drunk all the Raki themselves and were in an amazing state of intoxication. This was a bit interesting, since Stavros was planning to do a no limits record attempt to 140m the next day, and had gone to bed early. Now his crew did not look like they would be good for much. In fact Andy, chief safety diver, said to me: “Aaannna. You wille come tomorrowe, you makee the safeety for Stavros, yes? I thinke is maybe better. I wille be on the boat, makee the countedown, withe beer in my hand, yes!!” Somehow, this did not inspire me with confidence. I had planned to stay reasonably sober, but more beers just kept appearing and before I knew it, the sun was rising and it was six o’clock. Back in bed, I slept for all of two hours, before waking up in search of a breaksfast of orange juice, more orange juice, and then some orange juice. Plus coffee.

More slightly ill looking feedivers appeared throughout the morning, but Stavros' safety crew stayed in a coma for most of the day, making any record attempts quite impossible. I went back to Lissos (a secluded beach an hour’s hike away, which we visited on a day off earlier) with the Danish team, since the guys had been planning to make a rock running video for days. For this, they picked up some enormous stones off the beach, walking them along the bottom of the sea to the designated location.

There, they went on to loose their speedos, to then run along the ocean floor with said huge rocks on their shoulder, naked, looking all manly in a stone age cave man kind of way, or maybe like the ancient Greeks? Anyway, if you must know, this is the secret to why all the Danish guys are doing 200m dynamics. There were some plans to involve Maria and myself in this endevour, in the manner of dragging a (naked, of course) woman/mermaid along behind them by the hair, to round of the cave man image. Needless to say, Maria and I stayed safely on the beach, well away from such indecent proceedings. That evening after the banquet and official closing ceremony, all freedivers were treated to the video of said Danish training methods at the Lotos Bar. It was greeted with much hilarity and Jakob and Jesper, the protagonists of the movie, are deliberating whether it is wise to release said film on youtube, or if this would give access to the 200m secret to too broad a range of freedivers, therby possibly sabotaging the Danish chances at the worlds.

This evening, I did not manage to hide from the Raki as well as the previous night. The evil perpetrator was not one of the safety team, though, but Johan, which was an attack that definetely came from an unexpected direction! Somehow, when I had booked my flights while sitting safely in the bookshop, it had seemed like a good plan to leave on the first plane out of Chania on Monday morning, meaning that my transfer was leaving at four. The only other freediver who had sufferd such a lapse of brainpower when booking flights was Johan himself, so it was the two of us in a taxi. I told him straight away that if he insisted on giving me Raki, it would be entirely up to him to get me onto my plane, a responsibility he accepted quite happily, making me drink a shot in the process. Alkohol consumption in general was rather higher than the night before, with good spirits all around. Unfortunately, I did not manage to stay quite sober enough to observe the gossip potential around me. Sorry! I promise to do better next time.

Four minutes to four saw me running to the hotel, where Johan, clearly better orgnised than me, was already loading his bags in the taxi. Me, I still had to do some packing. This is not how I usually behave when going to airports. I am normally very well on top of such things. It was the Raki, honest. Whith Johan’s help, I managed to get into the car and we went off on our two hour ride across the mountains. Without his company, this would have been quite disorienting, if not a bit depressing, but we passed the time nicely, with a mix of sleeping (mostly me, I’m afraid, watched over by Johan) and enjoying the last of the whole freediving experience. By the time we reached Chania, I was fairly comatose and may very well just have passed out in a corner at the airport for a few days, but Johan was good to his promise and took care of getting us and all bags onto the right flight.

Now I am back in Berlin, feeling more or less recovered from the two day party, thinking about actually doing some work. Or maybe not yet, but soon. Very soon.

Meanwhile, there is one more thing I would like to share with you: I have compiled a list of the top ten excuses for not making a dive. As you know, freedivers are never short on explanations for things not working out quite as they might have wished. Feel free to comment and add to the list. Here goes, from last to first place:

10: The waves were too big
9: I got seasick
8: I made a mistake: I ate before the dive
7: I made a mistake: I did not eat before the dive (choose freely between 7 & 8 as it applies)
6: It’s the photographer’s fault, he got too close and distracted me (me, after missing my depth)
5: I was forced by the organizer to dive in the afternoon. My noseclip only stays on in the morning (me, loosing air from my noseclip)
4: Jakob forced us to walk all the way Lissos on our day off, so we got tired (the Danish team)
3: A sense of guilt weighed so heavily on me, I couldn’t focus (Jakob, having made the Danish team walk to Lissos on their day off)
2: I was suffering from testicular freezing (Will Winram, having ripped a big hole in his wetsuit bottoms)
1 – the absolute winner -: I WAS TOO DEEP ( Johan, having blacked out at the surface after his 101m dive)

In general, we have found that it is best to have your excuse handy before you even get in the water, and the most successful excuses are those that blame outside circumstances or third parties, such as photographers. Fred Buyle makes a perfect victim. Anyway, we apreciate further additions to the list, and will vote on the best pool excuses in Aarhus.

Danish team with the conveyor-belt coach

Action at the Mediterranean Freediving Meeting

2009-07-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

happy freedivers from Denmark:

As usual, I woke up early this morning with the familiar rush of nerves, suddenly quite glad that I didn’t give in to any of the announcement devils that were hopping around in my head yesterday afternoon. After the oatmeal-banana-honey breakfast that has served me well on recent deep dives, I headed down to the beach to let Michélè distract me and keep me company. There I encountered a new rule for the surface protocol, written on the information board – as if we don’t have enough rules to remember already – that said: “ALL athletes are required to kiss the in-water judge after their dive. No exceptions. Rebels will be punished” This had everyone asking who the in-water judge was going to be, and some serious faces on the male competitors, as they were preparing themselves to kiss judge Kimmo or Alexis. Michélè has been very busy during this meeting, managing the onshore organization, checking athletes are present at the mandatory 60min before official top, and do not disappear on their own to the toilet any more after that. In fact, she send Rob King, also known in the freediving world as Robert the King, to go with Jakob one time, where he checked the bathroom for oxygen tanks that might be hidden in the trash, or any other forbidden items, such as bars of chocolate. Rob has been diving ridiculously deep, which makes me feel quite inadequate, as he was only about five meters ahead of me when we met in 2007, but now he’s happily popping down to the eighties. I think it must be the bright pink stuff he keeps having, which he claims is a sports drink, but we believe is in fact radioactive. We’ll check tonight, if he starts to glow in the dark, we know something fishy is going on.

I went out all by myself today, with no one to look after me. Sniff. As I got to the line, it was just getting a bit rough, but anyone who has dived next to the platforms surfing on the waves in Sharm last year cannot be phased by such minor details. I was worried that the sled might have broken my constant weight again, and I sure felt pretty weird and disoriented to about 20m, where I just started to freefall and everything was fine. Before I knew it, I was at the plate, thinking “hurrah! I made it” and “should have announced more...” Some things never change. Minutes after my dive, I started the coaching conveyor belt, which included Maria, then Nicholas Guerry, then Jesper. Maria wisely turned early, feeling a bit worse for wear from her great dive yesterday. Nicholas turned early, too, which is a shame, but better to be safe. By now the waves were pretty huge and the organizer’s team just did not keep up with the ironing! Guillaume Nery did another super easy 80m free immersion dive, he seems relaxed and is diving very well, with an obvious love of what he is doing which is nice to see in a world class athlete.

I went to find my next Danish coaching project, which was Jesper, who once again had to dive first. Unlike yesterday, when he needed stressing out, it was pretty clear to me that my job was more along the lines of “it’s only two more finkicks” and “all you need to do is equalize” this time round. By the time I got him onto the rope, the waves were enormous, but he was so focused, nothing seemed to bother him much. There was true excitement in the air when he left the surface. Stavros has introduced a great device this year: a top-rate sonar, on which they can follow the divers progress the entire time. A guy on the boat shouts out “seventy meters – seventy five – eighty...”, which makes it incredibly exciting for all spectators. Hearing “touchdown – coming up” was an amazing moment. As soon as Jesper appeared back at around twenty meters, it was clear to me that he would make it, he was still looking so strong. He certainly did not need his coach on this dive, and well deserves to celebrate this amazing performance with a lot of beers tonight. Next up was Jakob, and I think we were all truly hoping he would make this dive, too. Again, the shout “touchdown” from the boat had us holding our breath, but as he reached the surface he just could not recover quick enough and briefly nodded off after taking a couple of breaths, leaving Jesper the sole new Danish record holder. Considering that Jacob only started competing last year, this was a fantastic dive, especially since he said he equalized all the way there without problems. More will come from both guys in the future!

A new fashion has been taken on by a handful of freedivers at the last day of competition: the kamikaze headband. It sports the kamikaze logo and is a very useful item, since it is made to hold the Velcro tag, which the freediver now only has to slap onto his forehead. Even athletes with the worst case of freediving brain should be able to manage that and it eliminates the irritating question from the judges who like asking for the tag, when it should be totally clear from the smile on the diver’s face that he has got it. Well, now it is right in front of them. Here is a picture of British diver Stuart Bond after his successful 58m cw performance:

Now there were lots more great dives, but I can’t talk about all of them, and anyway, I believe I have a party to go to. I am aware that everyone is well tired of hearing about all these dives all the time, and waiting for me to get to the real gossip, which I promise is coming up as soon as I have recovered from the likely three day hangover.

Oh what to announce on the final day

2009-07-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

First of all, I instantly have to confess to making a grave mistake, and apologize to my very good friend and longest training buddy Sara. How could I forget? I guess I have been so imersed in the little bubble that is the mediterranean freedving meeting that I have blanked out all previous experiences, and when I mentioned in my last post that the tlc I recieved from the Danes was possibly the best ever preparation for a performance, I neglected to state that it can only ever be a close second to the pedicure I got from my coach Sara just before it was time to warm up for static at the worlds in September. While most athletes were busy streching, yogaing, meditating, and generally being very serious, I got pretty toenails and went on to do a pb. Sorry Sara, it won’t happen again!

I have also been aware that the pictures I have posted previously of top freedivers William Winram and Stavros Kastrinakis have not shown them at their very best. Now I couldn’t leave you with a wrong impression and would like to state that both of them are naturally extremely handsome. Here is a picture, just in case, showing them in top shape:

Now that’s much better.

I was out all day today coaching a total of six athletes. It was just like a conveyor belt, one out, one in, with hardly any time to even leave the competition zone. I was more or less a part of the equipment! Things kicked off to a fun start when I went to get the zodiac taxi with Jakob and Jesper, both going out for their 85m dives, and Jesper mentioned that he was feeling almost too relaxed about the whole thing. Clearly, I was facing a totally new coaching challenge here: how to stress the athlete just enough to get him focused? Things such as “It’s a very deep dive” and “it’s definitely going to be a max” might have been said. Aparently it worked, since he once again broke the surface already smiling, closely followed by equally happy Jakob a few minutes later. Maria did an amazing 70m dive, but all my yelling did not induce her to remove her noseclip, so she has collected a red card but is having another go tomorrow. Will Winram turned early, tired, so I just ignored him when he came up. I am too busy to waste my valuable coaching time, after all. The challenge of the day was Christian, who had gone off to visit the fourth dimension and it took me shouting at him for 13 seconds to get him back to planet earth and through the surface protocol. In the end, he listened, and collected a white card for a 58m no fins dive, which has qualified him for the worlds in the Bahamas.

After all that drama, I was suddenly feeling very tired and decided to go off to sleep for a few hours, to ponder my anouncement options in my dreams. The moment I was on my bed, I was wide awake, with lots of interesting ideas going through my head. This I kept up for three hours, until I had only minutes left to announce, when I felt so stressed I quickly wrote down sixty meters constant weight and handed it in before I could change my mind. I encountered the Danish team outside the organizers room, and I know I have been going on about them, but really, this is getting to be quite fun: the gentleman’s agreement is still firmly in place, and both Jesper and Jakob have announced 91m, a Danish record! Even William (who is going for 77m no fins again) was impressed, to the point of threatening to buy them both a whisky if they did those dives. I can already see where the party tomorrow night is headed.

With such go for broke dives to do tomorrow the two boys (I’m not convinced one could call them men) deserved some tlc themsleves tonight, so were treated to a massage in turn. Let there be no excuses! I will be out there to coach them and a whole host of other lonely freedivers, so I will be able to report back firsthand from all the action. This will hopefully include a positive result from Johan, who is having another go at breaking the hundred meter curse. Maybe he needs stressing out a bit before the dive, like Jesper? I shall find out and offer my assistance. Now it is very late, and I should be sleeping, so I will leave you to ponder more important things and report back from our little freediving universe tomorrow.

90m! A new German variable weight record at the MFM

2009-07-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I have been offline for a while, too busy sunbathing, drinking orange juice and talking about freediving. Oh, and training a little, occasionally. We’ve had mixed days out here, with some pretty rough weather making things complicated, mostly for organiser Stavros who was faced with 32 athletes all wanting to train at 10am sharp. Meanwhile, I still got to go out early to do my sled dive, but felt the pressure with a line up of freedivers behind me foaming at the mouth, ready to go. As bossy boss Stavros had forced me to put the rope to 90m, and I always do what men tell me, I was headed down there when I got hit by a nasty cramp in my calf at around ten meters. My first idea was to stop and try again, but I realized that I would end up at the back of the grid, so I took my cramp all the way down to 87m, where messy equalisation finally stopped me. The next day all sled people got banished to the afternoon. I woke up tired, and kind of knew I should rest, but was so annoyed with having missed the target the day before, I couldn’t get myself to do it. I was sort of hoping the weather would turn bad and take matters out of my hands, but no such thing. Warm-ups were terrible and had me considering such options as a shallow dive, or, even better, bed, when I heard myself say: “90m” to Stavros. There are some lessons my brain just refuses to learn, as I quickly found out when I was distracted by a strange gurgling noise on the way down. It took me 35m to realize that my noseclip wasn’t on properly, and the bubbling sound was the air escaping with each equalization. Needless to say, there was not much left, and I stopped at 53m, fully aware that I should have stayed in my room, asleep, all morning. Having learned this lesson the hard way, I decided to take two days off, which left me free to coach people on the first competition day.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been hanging out with the Danish team. Now they used to always strike me as kind of quiet, but excellent divers, very focused on their training and all annoyingly good at dynamic. Saturday night taught me not to assume anything anymore. After dragging me off to a new restaurant where they proceeded to order two bottles of wine in quick succession, they made me drink the free Raki that came with the meal and then, to round off all the things you should not do in the middle of training, took me back via the Lotos bar. Here Jesper and Jakob ordered Mojitos, Maria a Cuba Libre, while I stuck to a beer. Rune was the only one who stayed sober, no idea what he must have been thinking about us lot. Things got worse when the waitress came over with some free shots, followed by another round, followed by some beers on the house. I crawled into bed at three thirty in the morning, and am still trying to work out how they managed to get me involved in this kind of shocking behaviour. One would have thought that I had learned to be wary of all Nordic people by now, but a suggestion by said Danish team to head for the beach on our rest day seemed like a good plan. Unbeknown to me, they had gathered information from fellow Dane Sofus, about a very beautiful, secluded beach that we should visit. After wading around some rocks, we found ourselves in a pristine cove, surrounded by picturesque cliffs, and – here we go – a whole load of naked people! Needless to say, we kept our bikinis and swimming trunks on, but Maria and I were treated to a charming display of the local wildlife strutting up and down in front of us suggestively when our good-for-nothing-men went off hunting for some caves instead of looking after us.

Come Monday, I was impressed with the overall Danish stamina when I went out to coach Christian to his first no fins competition dive with 50m, Maria to a great 65m and Jesper to 75. Jakob also did 75m, and you should have seen their smiles. We stayed out to watch the exciting dive of the day: Johan had gone all out to beat the 100m curse and announced 101m constant weight, a dive we were all sure he could do having seen him come up clean from 97 in training. Things turned out differently this time and he treated us to a good Viking show after returning to the surface – he took two breaths, kind of realized it wasn’t going his way, starting cursing, and blacked out. As soon as the safety divers picked him up, he came round and cursed some more! I saw Per Westin do something similar later on, so they seem to have some kind of Swedish-man-thing going there, I’ll find out some details if I can. After a days’ rest Johan went for it again, although he made the critical mistake of reducing from 101m to 100m, which he should have known would be bad luck since he was aware (I didn’t even know it myself, I swear, I just have “the room at the end”...) that 101 was my room number. Don’t ask how he knew, he just did, and it’s all innocent, in case you were wondering. Anyway, back to the mistake, a meter less didn’t help, and where he was too slow on the ascent on the first try, he was too slow on the descent the second time round, and the lights went out at 7m. Now we are waiting for the final try on Saturday, when, provided he announces 101, I am confident that he will make it.

In the middle of all this, Stavros has been up to his tricks from last year, showing us what a bunch of pussies we are, by managing an entire competition plus training for a bunch of annoying athletes, safety diving, filming, and quickly popping down to 111m in record time when there is a break , to set a new Greek record in variable weight. Here is a picture of him breathing up on the boat. I didn’t take that charming shot, you have to blame his safety divers.

Will Winram and Rob King both had a bad moment when they were glad to hear their alarm as they were freefalling towards the bottom, which apparently means that they are not far from the plate and can stop equalizing, only it didn’t mean this at all in this case, since it was some random alarm set on the official gauge. They both had to turn early, which should teach the officials to check gauges for alarms, and possibly teach athletes not to rely on such things. After a brief moment of “I quit”, Will has recovered his competitive spirit and announced 77m no fins for tomorrow, closely followed by Guillaume Nery who has been breezing down to depths such as 90m constant weight and is having a go at 75 no fins. Jesper and Jakob have been having some fun agreeing on the depth they will do and then announcing the same thing – yesterday the y both did fantastic 80m dives, easy as you like, and the smiles have been growing by the day. They look like a couple of ten-year old boys with a new toy, who are generally up to no good.

In the midst of all this, I had a go at 90m in a record attempt. This took place on Stavros’ new über-sled, which, since I am diving variable, was missing the tank and liftbag that normally creates a nice bit of drag, slowing the monster down somewhat. Add to this that unlike Stavros and Will, I cannot fit 9 litres of air into my lungs, (3.6, actually) and was wearing a 3mm suit, and you can see where this is going. Shortly after I released the break, I had already shot past photographer Fred Buyle and was out of sight before he could take a picture. I was going so fast, my noseclip was flying off, so I had to hold it on, which got me very distracted and before I knew it, I was well behind with equalization and stuck at 73m. Grrrrrrrrrr. I decided to go back to wearing the mask and give it one more training dive, which I had yesterday after the competition. This time, Stavros took some weight of the rocket sled, so I a bit more time to think on the way down. I still ran out of air for my ears, though, and, thinking I was somewhere around seventy, hit the brake. Back at the surface, I saw that I had been at 86, and could have pushed it to the bottom! This at least gave me the confidence to have another go today, early in the morning, especially since I realized that my mask was equalized at the bottom, instead of my ears. Mantra: pinch the nose, pinch the nose...

By now I was starting to get annoyed with missing my depth, so as the day progressed, I steadily got more nervous. Fortunately, I had the Danish team to distract me, who made me go back to the naked beach, and took me out to dinner in the evening. This had been part of a plan they made to thank me for lending Maria my wetsuit. I was presented with the following choice: one: drinks, two: dinner, or three: a massage by Jesper and Jakob. Hmmmmm. I was still considering my options when they took matters out of my hands by feeding me, making me drink some wine, and then taking me down to the moonlit beach, where we (and I would like to state clearly at this point that Rune and Maria were present at all times) sat on some blankets with a candle and takeaway peppermint tea, listening to the waves and some music from Jakob’s eclectic collection. Before I could protest, I was treated to the third option, with Jesper massaging my head and Jakob my feet. Once we overcame a fit of the giggles at the all around cheesiness of this situation, it actually turned into the most relaxing preparation for a record dive I have had so far. How could I possibly fail to go to 90m after so much tlc?

This morning I woke up at five, with the usual fit of nerves. This seems to be good for me, though, as it really gets me focused. There is no more messing around. Conditions were just beautiful, calm, no waves, fantastic visibility. I had Jesper with me to coach, and the other Danes for moral support and to take pictures. Just before I got onto the sled, I had a brief moment of nerves over the amount of people around just for me. All this vanished, as usual, in time for official top, and as I released the brake I was concentrating on my new mantra: do not put air in the mask. I was keeping my nose firmly pinched, while still going well fast. Somewhere around seventy I decided it was time to slow down, so I stuck my elbows out create a bit of drag, and was just running out air for the ears when I heard the 80m alarm and was at 90m seconds later, with a squeezing mask but room left for another five or six meters. The whole way up, I was grinning to myself, pleased as punch. I just saw the surface video: I come up, do the surface protocol in four seconds, then break into a huge smile and start laughing, then finally remember to take a breath. Oh well, who needs to breathe when they have made it to ninety meters!

Tomorrow I am having a day off, which leaves me free to coach five people. Exciting will be Jesper and Jakob again, who are sticking to their gentleman’s agreement and have both announced 85m. Maria is going for it big time with 70, as is young Rune with 63. I am hoping to see a load of white cards. Now, I am off to bed, to contemplate what to do on the last day of competition. As usual, I have the odd funky idea in my head, and will soon let you know which devil is winning.

Blue people at the mediterranean freediving meeting

2009-06-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

I made it back to Crete for the second Mediterranean Freediving Meeting. Truth is, it was a close call: I had a particularly blond moment at Athens airport, where I forgot to put my watch forward by one hour and was still happily sitting in the McCafé, reading, when I heard my name from the loudspeakers, asking me (plus a couple of other blond people) to please make my way directly to gate 31, where my flight was now closing. I ran through the airport and thought I was clever when I put my divewatch in my bag at security, to stop it from setting of the beeping thingy. Unfortunately, it did set off the very slow guy who was x-raying my belongings, who had to ask his boss, who had to tell another equally challenged underling to look at my bag, who had to rummage through all the important things we girls carry around with us. When I arrived at the gate, they had to call the captain and ask if there was time to get me to the plane. Moments later a guy pulled up in a Volkswagen Golf, and drove me across the airfield, tires screeching in the corners. You can imagine my relief, and my surprise, when I found the flight full of freedivers, most of whom had spent four hours at the airport, too, but had all made it to the plane on time, since the only blondes (William Winram and Bérangère Duclos) had Will’s wife Michéle to take care of them. A taxi ride across the mountains delivered us to Sougia, where we headed straight for the beach and the Lotos café, our favourite hangout from the year before, to kick off the freediving meeting with one of their fresh juices. Raki will follow on the last night.

We are around thirty freedivers this year. Most have been attracted by the raving of the ones who were here the last time. In a way I am having mixed feelings: on the one hand, it’s nice to see my friends, on the other hand, it’s a bit like one of those secret holiday spots: you tell everyone about them and before you know it, busloads of Thompson package tourists have arrived. Never mind, I’m sure it will make the final party even better. Organizer, head safety diver, and general man of all trades Stavros has set up a list with slots for everyone to sign into training times. He is a little less energizer bunnied than last year, mostly due to a very well trained crew of safety divers, whom he has given radios, so he can now boss them around at all hours. I went to sign up for some sled diving right away and was fascinated by a note stuck to the pen that reads: “If you remove this pen from this list, it will selfdestruct and all your apnea capabilities will disappear instantly”. Apparently, and I am not mentioning any names here, plans have been made to plant this pen on fellow competitors as a fantastic new way of sabotaging opponents. When the first person fails to leave the surface as they attempt to duck dive in the competition, we’ll know that the pen has found its victim.

Training was off to a good start for most of us. I remembered how much fun was to be had whizzing down on a sled when I headed right down to sixty and then seventy meters in the first two days. Many of us have commented on the fantastic conditions, how calm the sea is, and how blue the water. Stavros claims that he has been out painting everything blue every morning and then ironing the waves, but I think he is lying, and has in fact passed this task to his safety slaves. I have been out early with William Winram, Stavros and Nicloas Guerry, to dive on the sled. William had obviously not had a good enough word with (brunette!) wife Michèle before he set off to dive, and had proper blond episode at 120m on the new giant no limits sled. It is a clever construction: When you hit the bottom, you pull out a pin that releases the weights. Then you inflate the liftbag, and off you go, minus thirty kilos, at ridiculous speed, back to the surface. Now Will, combining blond hair with a male thought process, decided to be extra clever and inflated the bag while the weights were still attached, to the point where the sled was beginning to move. Then he pulled out the pin and dropped the thirty kilos. You can imagine what happened next. The sled, now turned rocket, took off at warp speed, smacking Will’s foot but mercyfully avoiding his balls as it blew past him. He tried to grab hold of the kneebar – not a chance – and shot of the bottom attached only by his lanyard, which he had to climb along to get back to the sled. He spent the next 100m hanging on with one hand, while clutching his goggles and hood with the other one, screaming, in his own words, “fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuck” all the way up. At least he was screaming in his head, and gave me a very convincing demonstration of the facial expression he wore during the twenty seconds it took him to get from 120 to 30m. Here’s a picture:

Yesterday the weather turned and a strong wind moved in some biggish waves. I was out on the first zodiac taxi again, together with Nicolas Guerry, whom I managed to elbow out of the way (well. Ladies first, after all) to head down to 80m before he had a chance to get on the line. It was a great dive, except that I did not manage to pack very well, due to the fact that I was submerged in waves all the time, and then had no air left to equalize at the bottom as planned. As soon as I was safely back up, Stavros announced that the anchor was dragging and we were getting into shallower water by the minute, so he cancelled all diving for the rest of the day. Somehow, and I am not quite sure how precisely, Nicolas has decided that it was all my fault and I am to be held responsible for his missed dive. Now, and feel free to express your opinion here, in my experience it is usually the men who are to be blamed for everything? Anyway, I believe I have been made to make up for it, so all is well. Today he went out to do some more variable weight, and returned having decided that he does not like sled diving. Something obviously didn’t go well, but since I am having a day off, it was not my fault this time, honest!

The Danish team is here, represented by Jesper, Maria, Rune, Jakob and Christian, who was training with me in Dahab. He has been steadily heading deeper, but said he chickened out today, a habit we will not allow him to pick up. Meanwhile, Maria’s luggage just stayed behind in Kopenhagen, so she has spent the days in her sarong, and the time in the water in my 3mm suit, which fits her perfectly. I am convinced she is headed to 70m, which Jesper passed today with a pb of 73m. Every time he gets in the water, he does a pb, it seems, and then he had the cheek to complain that he had air in his mouth but could not figure out how to use it. This seems to be a very desirable problem to me – I would love to have air in my mouth at seventy meters. In fact, I would love to be at seventy meters constant weight, period. Jakob is even more annoying, diving to wherever he wants with plenty of air to equalize and strength to spare. The brits are represented by George, Liv, Dave and Stuart. It was Livvy’s birthday yesterday, so George organized a special treat for her: a birthday swim with lots of freedivers, all dressed in blue. Now Liv has a special thing about men in blue, you have to ask her for details, but since plenty of them turned up, it was a right birthday treat. I promise to get hold of a picture and post it here soon.

In the evening, we all headed to Lotos (again) where she was given her present of an enormous blue inflatable shark. Yannis, one of the safety divers, also had his birthday, so the guys went out and got him an inflatable turtle the size of an island, which looked like it could eat the shark for dinner. Things were going fine when Rob King turned evil and started to bring out the Rakis, getting Liv into great spirits pretty quickly. We reached the peak of excitement when she discovered the longest eyebrow hair ever on one of the safety divers, which, and I have seen this with my own eyes, reached down to his cheek. Liv was so fascinated by this, she started to go round to measure the eyebrow hair of all the guys, until she was taken home by George and Stuart, who were beginning to worry that she might develop a bit of a fetish for men who wear their eyebrows long enough to have to flick them aside when they look at you.

Tomorrow we are hoping that Stavros will have found the off-switch for the wind again, although he seems to be too busy being bossy to pay attention to small matters like that. Dave Tranfield, known to his friends and builders up north as Trannie, has been inching his way deeper in constant weight no fins. Today he was pleased with a result of 45m, and showed great common sense and unusual macho man reserve in announcing that he would go for 46m tomorrow. Stavros, in bossy mode, was having none of this and told him that he should go for 47. When Dave said he felt that 46 was plenty, Stavros said: “47. It’s my rope!” Whatever next? He has told me that I should set the plate to 90 tomorrow, do I dare to disagree? He is shorter than me, but in terms of body mass, I’m afraid I might lose. I’ll report more soon. So far no one has got off with any people they shouldn’t have, so I apologize for the lack of interesting gossip. If none is forthcoming, I promise to make some up.

A small matter of Egyptian plumbing

2009-06-20T03:42:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from Dahab (first visit since September!), where I stayed with Sara in her lovely, luxurious new house. Most noteworthy is the guest bathroom, which sports a previously unseen, top-notch item: the steaming toilet. We are undecided as to whether this will catch on in the high-end fixtures market, but remain hopeful that others will see the advantages to having such a versatile fitting. Here’s the story: apparently, the boiler didn’t work, so Sara got the plumber in to fix it just before I afrrived. So far so good, all was well, hot water working. A couple of nights later, Sara was woken up by an almighty bang that sent the glasses rattling in the kitchen. When she ran out to see what had exploded, clouds of steam were billowing from the guest bathroom, much in the manner of a hamam. On closer investigation, it became clear that the steam was pouring out of the toilet bowl! Trying to turn off the water supply, she found the tap too hot to touch. The whole toilet was literally boiling. When we removed the cover and had a look into the cistern the next day, all the plastic parts had melted. Amazing. The plumber had removed the maximum temperature cut out setting on the boiler, so the water just kept heating and heating. Eventually, a valve blew, and the massive pressure found the only way out, which, and this remains a bit of a mystery, seems to have led into my loo. Welcome to Egypt.

Small household problems aside, I went out to the blue hole for the first time in eight months. The plan was to take it easy and have some fun, since I was sure it would take a long time to get adapted again. Imagine my surprise when I hit 57m in three sessions – only 2m off my pb from the previous year. All the dives felt remarkably easy, no lactic legs, hardly any contractions, feeling relaxed and happy down there, taking a good look at the arch every time. Pooltraining is now beginning to appear in a whole new light to me. What is also working very well is training with my second computer: I dive on the long line but use a depth alarm. Since I like having a target, I set the alarm to the minimum depth I want to reach. If I feel good when it goes off, I count to three and turn. This allows me a certain amount of room in the warm up training phase, to progress as fast as my body will let me. At the end of the first week, I was back at 60m, with a big smile on my face.

Meanwhile, Sara has been working towards her ultimate goal, the 100m dive. Danish diver Christian was also with us, he has been hiding from the other Danish freedivers, and never met any of them! This will be changed when he comes out to Crete next week. He has set himself a good target of 56m unassisted, and was getting steadily deeper as the week progressed. With his help we managed to safety Sara in a couple of nice, deep training dives, where she was looking strong – she’s on track. In my last deep session I wanted to see what I could do with my mouthfill, and put the rope to 67m. I held on to some air long enough to hit a new depth of 66m, feeling excited but also like there is more work to do: I arrived there with no air left to equalize. In the end I enlisted the help of number one Italian coach Linda, who tweaked my technique during two sessions. First one was mouthfilling only, and I improved enough to take the mouthfill a good six metres deeper than before. Then, in the second session, came a revelation. Apparently, I am a freak of nature, and can only equalize with a noseclip when I have mask on my face, which I fill with water. I know it’s weird, but there you have it. When my alarm went off, I was taking the biggest mouthfill ever. Where did all that air come from? We think what has been happening is the following: since I can kind off equalize hands free, I don’t need a lot of pressure to push against. It looks like I have not been pinching my nose very well on the way down, thus allowing a bit of air to escape on each equalization. This is most likely the reason why I don’t have anything left when I get to sixty. I am very excited to test this theory in Crete next week, where my new mantra on the way down will be “pinch the nose, pinch the nose, pinch the nose...!”

Hemmoor no fins comp - a laugh

2009-05-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

I know I am a little late in reporting from Hemmoor. My excuse is that I am back to the chaotic travel lifestyle, and have been sidetracked by a myriad of things such as motorways and airports. Anyway, Hemmoor was wonderful. First of all Martin, Elisabeth and I arrived quite tired at 2am, having been bossed around all day by the demanding Planetopia TV crew (they were actually very nice), who were in Berlin to film me training in the pool and gym. I definetely owe a big dinner to Elisabeth, who ended up having to jump trough hoops all day without breakfast, just so she could be my coach and safety for telly. If ever she has a TV shoot, I promise to be at her disposal. We drew the line at filming human interest at around five, since we had not eaten, or packed, and I still had to drive us to Hemmoor, a mere four to five hour trip. Finally ready to set off, I turned up to pick up Martin and Elisabeth, only to find that Elisabeth had brought the entire library from her university and Martin had countless things that were all indispensable for our competition. Now I do have a nice car, but it does not magically turn itself into a truck when I snip my fingers! I think I packed and repacked the entire load three times, until we squashed in Elisabeth behind her monofin and books and got on our way.

In Hemmoor we had some changeable weather to begin with – blustery and cloudy, and fairly cold. Elisabeth and I got into the water on Thursday afternoon to check weighting and see if we could find a good rythm for swimming down and equalizing, or if the water (in your dreams) might be warm enough to go with just a noseclip. Rarely have I laughed so much in freediving. All I can say is that I am very glad that no one saw us – it was the most ridicoulous performance of my career so far. I know I mentioned in the last post how I was hoping that on the way up, I would not fall down anymore between strokes. Surprisingly, this did not prove to be an issue, largerly because I could not get down past ten meters in the first place. In fact, I had the reverse problem: I was bobbing back up between strokes, much in the manner of a cork. After wondering for a moment how she could help me, Elisabeth simply gave in to a fit of the giggles. There was not much else to say. I had my share of fun when she ended up with her legs sticking out of the water after the duck dive, waving her feet in the air helplessly, while trying to swim down. At this rate, it was not looking good for star performances only two days later, and I was not sure how I would get myself down to 35m and back up again without at least a week of training. As if to agree with our dire performance, the weather unleashed an almighty thunderstorm with floodlike rain and hail on us as soon as we got out of the water.

The next day I went back in with Elisabeth and Chris Ernest, ready and determined to do a deepish dive and do it well. 27m certainly felt deep, but unfortunately did not feel well, making me wonder if it would be ok to announce 35m, or if this would set me up for my first real problem in competition. A lot of deliberating over a barbecue cooked mostly by Chris and Elisabeth later, I did what I always do, and just announced the dive anyway. After some discussion with Elisabeth, I made a little pact with myself, that meant that if anything should go wrong during the dive, I would bail and pull up. Elisabeth’s ears had not been playing along so she was free to coach me, which was wonderful. First of all she made me eat a huge portion of porridge, which had me feeling like I was going to sink extra fast until 45min before the dive, when I just felt like I had energy. It did not help to calm the nerves, though, which were in overdrive, made worse by the arrival of the Planetopia TV crew, who were all excited to see record performances. As always, the nerves were gone the instant my face was underwater, so I swam down fine, turned, and got my lanyard caught after two strokes. I took a moment to free myself, but decided to stick with the pact and pull up, as I really was not sure how this dive woud go otherwise. In two years of freediving I have never been stuck – trust this to happen the one time you have a TV camera there! Fortunately, I had another chance the next day and made it easily enough, bothered only by contractions that started shortly after the duck dive and lasted all the way down and back up again. I was extremely pleased to see Daan (Verhoven) who was on safety duty, at what I thought was 20m – only he did not meet me at 20m, but at 25. I did wonder why I just wouldn’t start floating...aparently, he got bored, because I was soooo slow. „There is room for improvement“ are not quite the words he used, but he suggested something along those lines. Me, I am glad this is over, and I am more than ever determined not to do no fins again until I have had some tuition from someone who knows how to swim, like Will Winram. Help!!

The things I really enjoyed about Hemmoor are some of my favorites in freediving: the companionable atmosphere, and the great people. A thank you to Martin for organising this, and a big thank you especially to Daan, for being the knight in shining armour and rescuing me and Maria from the monster spider in our bedroom. Diving down to 80m does not scare us, but an insect big enough to have a face is enough to have us run shrieking from the room. Don’t ask me to explain.

Remember deep diving

2009-05-14T04:46:00.000-07:00

Since I have been moaning about the pool for months now, I am glad to report that the first deep diving is coming up in eight days’ time. This year, I am starting the depth season not in the warm, blue waters of Egypt, but in Hemmoor. Hemmoor is a lake in the very north of Germany. Now “lake” and “north” do not normally describe my natural habitat, but I have been talked into going there by Martin, who is organising a small competition with only one choice: constant weight no fins. Those who have dived with me will now that no fins is not my best discipline. I am hoping that when I turn at 30+ meters, all the swimming I have done in the pool over the last few weeks will turn out to have had a positive effect and I will not fall back down between strokes anymore.

I am also hoping (good luck, says a diving friend of mine) that the weather will be sunny and hot, as I have a tendency to freeze in places that are called “lake” and “northern”. Granted that we will have a few days of early summer, I am actually looking forward to the weekend. It will be great to get in the water with other freedivers and see if my body can remember such things as a bloodshift. Hemmoor is an especially beautiful lake, with good visibility and lots of things to look at, such as a sunken forest, which is quite magical, with pike and carp hanging out between the trees as the sun filters in. There is a competitive element to the whole endeavour, too – Aida Germany still separates records set in the lake and in the sea, so although I have the record in constant weight no fins with 40m, in the sea, the record in the lake with 33m remains to be broken and will provide me with some motivation to do something other than sunbathe and swim around in mystical sunken forests. To make things more exciting, I have yet another TV crew in tow, who are doing a story for the science program “Planetopia”. As TV crews do, they are likely to expect me to break a record, and bingo! I have provided myself with pressure again. It will all be fun…pictures and videos to follow.

113m! Relief is the word of the day.

2009-05-03T08:59:00.000-07:00

I had a much better night this time, feeling content and pleased with myself over the fact that I swam 150m on one breath, sleeping happily and deeply until 6am, when I woke up to a brief "oh shit" moment. I managed to recover quickly though, and stayed pretty relaxed unitl I started my warm-up. A brief rush of nerves during the first dry static was supressed, and I felt confident and a lot happier than yesterday until about one minute to official top, when the stray thought of "...125m?" passed through my mind, which instantly got me back to the 200bpm heartrate. This is something I need to learn to avoid somehow, seconds before it's time to start a dive. Suggestions are welcome. I pushed off the wall thinking about not tensing my feet to prevent cramp - I have managed to get cramps in my feet in no fins before, which is not conducive to a good performance. Feeling nice and relaxed, I got to the end perfectly with four and a half strokes, quite pleased with myself.

All was well until the 50m turn, when a new sensation set in: terribly heavy arms and legs! This threw me a bit, since I had not experienced this in no fins, and certainly not half way through the dive. I briefly wondered if I was going to make it like this, and started telling myself that it was definitely ok to come up early, that one record was respectable enough after only six weeks of training. This kept me distracted till I touched the wall at 75m, and got spurred on by Matthias banging on the ladder, which made me realise that all I had to do was swim to the end and pop up! As it goes, once you get to the end, you think, ok, just the turn, then you think, ok, one more stroke, then one more, then I was thinking: arms and legs are feeling bad, who knows what this means, so lets be safe here and come up. This time I was samba-free, very clean, and very happy, with a new pb and new German record of 113m! I don't know why we do these things, I mostly did it because there were so many people watching, it would have been embarrassing to pop up at fifty. Well, and maybe a tiny bit because I am stubborn. Still, the relief when I realised that I wouldn't have to do any more of this was quite enormous, to say the least. Standing under the shower ten minutes later, it slowly dawned on me that the pool world championships in Aarhus are not that far away, and that to prevent being embarassed there, I would have to continue training pretty much right away, so rather than having this seemingly endless pool-training-free strech ahead of me, it is more in the vicinity of a couple of days. "Oh shit" springs to mind.

Here is video of the performance. We did film the 150m, too, or at least we tried, but Steffen had a bad day and alternated between filming the lane markers and the tiles on the bottom - don't ask. He did a great job today though, and since stylewise I made a bit of a mess of yesterday's dive, I am actually quite grateful to him for not having recorded my nasty turns. Check out today's slow, but clean, record dive here:

Now static remains for me to work on, which will most likely take a couple of years. Never mind, it's good to have something to look forward to. Thanks for all the crossed fingers, everyone!

150m! One down, one to go

2009-05-02T03:44:00.000-07:00

Oh shit.

2009-04-30T03:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I returned from our last training session knowing that the final chance to fix any problems was over. Fortunately, all went reasonably well and I left the gym feeling well prepared. Experience shows that this is a feeling that will gradually vanish over the next couple of days, while a sensation commonly described as “nerves” takes over. It’s the “oh shit” phase of training and lasts until I hear “five, four, three, two, one, official top” (top = time of performance, for those who are not familiar with a freediving countdown). As soon as my head is under water, everything is ok. I hope.

I managed to get back on track after the week of gloom and misery. A couple of days rest did the trick, and I felt ready to push myself again. Martin left me to go off and enjoy himself in Prague for a weekend, so I got my friend Steffen in to replace him. Steffen is a scuba instructor that I helped to teach, so I know he can handle a problem and will stay calm. At the same time, he has only recently started to do a bit of freediving and is as excited as a child with a new puppy. Coming along to be my safety and coach had him all jittery with nerves, which was rather amusing. Since static had been such a disaster, I decided I would take it easy, change things around a bit and not push myself. So I did a ‘two, three, four’: two minute breathe-up, two minute hold, three minute breathe-up, three minute hold, four minute breathe-up, four minute hold. I told Steffen that I would most likely stop at four minutes or soon thereafter. When it came to the final hold, contractions started early but didn’t feel too bad, so I carried on a bit, and then a bit more, and then it was five minutes, and before I knew it, I ended with a new pb of 5:23. Poor Steffen nearly had a heart attack, but did very well, even telling me that I was “looking good”, which he said about a minute into the hold, at which point I would very well hope to still look alright! Anyway, I was very grateful for his help and felt safe in his hands.

Monday saw coach Martin return, and we had a couple more tough sessions, finishing with a 75m DNF and 100m DYN done for the cameras of the local TV crew. After the pool, they followed me up to the gym and filmed me doing my strength training routine, which was a rather strange experience. I couldn’t help feeling a bit naff, cycling and lifting weights with a camera crew in tow. Fortunately it was quiet, so not too many people saw us. The final product is aired tonight, I will censor it and then decide whether I post a link or not. In the last few days, we have been tapering off, just doing some maintenance and relearning the turns with the fin, which I seem to erase from memory on a regular basis. Hopefully I can keep the information stored until Saturday this time. All is on track now, it is a question of eating, eating some more and resting for the next two days, or so I thought. Then I woke up this morning with a totally stiff neck, unable to move my head. An emergency visit to my physio later, I can now turn my head again, but am still very sore and aching. He says there is enough work for a few sessions, and that it may yet get worse. I am beginning to wonder whether I am destined to ever do a freediving performance in the pool while fully healthy? Anyway, there was some saying I heard along the lines of: “suffering is inevitable, pain is optional.” It’s all in the mind. Still. Mine will be a nervous mess come tomorrow lunchtime.

Wish me luck everyone!

Beat the negative mind

2009-04-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

Generally, my own ability to be stubborn never ceases to surprise me. I have been battling with the negative mind, as Sara calls it, throughout this endeavour, which, considering my attitude towards all things to do with pooltraining, does not come as a surprise. There have been a few negative-voice-highlights so far. When Elisabeth was here to help with my technique, I had decided to do a max attempt in dynamic. The first thing that went through my mind upon waking that morning was “Am tired, want to stay in bed, don’t want to do any stupid dynamic”. As I drove over to pick up Martin and Elisabeth, I was preparing my excuses. One: I need a break. Two: since Elisabeth is here, it makes much more sense to train technique. With these and a number of other good bailouts well prepared, I was starting to feel less glum already. Until my two coaches got in the car, that is. They were having none of it. Feeling grumpy, I went on to prepare for my max, mostly preparing how it was going to be awful and I was going to just stop. As soon as I pushed off the wall, I wanted to surface. Right, I thought, this is just nasty, will stop at 50m. Then it struck me: if I come up at fifty, Martin and Elisabeth are going to make me do it again. I don’t want to do it again. Ok, I bargained with the by now very negative mind, 75. As I hit the wall, I decided a turn and a push would get me into the safe, non-repeat zone. As soon I had turned, I was thinking: 100m is not so far and will look like I have made an effort. At 100m, ambition kicked in and sent me on to 125, nice and clean and not feeling grumpy anymore at all.

I suspect part of my secret is that I think all stuff pool is so horrible, I don’t ever want to do it twice, so I just keep going no matter what. Sometimes I am able to relax and tell myself that all is well, that contractions are good for me, that it’s not far, etc. etc. Other times, I just want to stop, the whole time, and am mostly bargaining with myself and calculating where I can come up without being too embarrassed. In competition it is usually the latter, or has been, so far. Martin, who is rather good at being encouraging or tough as the moment requires, seems to have worked out that in general, I will do whatever he says, and has used this to my own advantage. The whole of last week I was miserable, with motivation at an all time low. We have been training static and my maxes have been getting shorter every time, so now I am back down to something like 4:30! It’s like some kind of weird reverse-training. The other day, I simply had enough and announced to Martin that instead of doing no fins after static, I was going to swim the 600m and then go home. Just when I was finished, he came over with a neckweight and announced that it was time to do one 50m DNF. Alright then, I thought, just the one, let’s get it over with. Counting my strokes along the way, I realized I didn’t feel too bad, and before I knew it, I was at 75m, clean and easy. The best thing was to see that even though I felt bad enough to want to stay in bed, I could get away with 75m no fins, without preparation. Suddenly, the negative mind was all quiet.

Having said that, it has been busy all week, and I have been feeling progressively more tired. Martin is busy finishing off his bachelor thesis, which has given me two days off training in a row. I have suppressed the urge to go for a run in the Easter sunshine and am beginning to feel more rested and mentally ready to push myself again. Hopefully, next week will be better!

For those of you who were wondering: yes, I do talk to myself all the time whilst diving, and no, I am not mad and do not talk to my potted plants. There.

Half way point

2009-04-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

My lovely training pool (We try to avoid the aquafitness classes)

The last three weeks have passed in a blur of training, working, eating, sleeping, training. It’s almost like Dahab, except for the ‘working’ bit in there, and, minor detail, the weather. Although, even we poor white, white people in Berlin have seen the sun for three days now. Not that I get to see it much, since I spend most of my time in the pool or the gym.

Coach Martin and I thought it might be good idea to start the mission with an honest assessment of the situation, to find out if I could remember what way round the mask goes on. In the first three days I did three max attempts: static was surprisingly alright with 4:33, and dynamic even better with 100m, only 14m short of my pb. The real surprise came when I decided to just keep going in dynamic no fins and ended up clean at 80m. This was only my second attempt at this discipline ever, so I felt I was off to a good start. I was soon brought back down to earth when Martin told me I had taken between six and seven strokes per 25m, and that he had suffered with me the whole way. Apparently, even five strokes are too many. Tell that to a non-swimmer like myself. What do I know? I just swim along, kind of. I think this was the moment where Martin saw what his role in this endeavour was going to be. He embarked on becoming the coach with the whip straight away and launched me into a technique training regime which I suspect is heavily inspired by his sessions with the Aarhus crowd. He tells me that the look on my face when he informed me that I was going to do four times 50m no fins without any warm-up, while still panting from the 600m swim, was priceless. Several sessions later, I have realized that 50m plus a turn is standard stuff that can be done anytime. It’s all in the mind, or most of it, anyway. So far, we have managed to improve my dreadful no fins technique and strokes have come down to four per 25m. I am now experimenting with four and a half, mostly because it is nicer to reach the end with arms outstretched, ready to do the turn, and also to improve my speed. Compared to 39sec/25m I am now down to 33sec/25m, which feels good.

Help with monofin technique, which is even worse than no fins, and yes, that is possible, as those who saw me in Egypt will be happy to tell you, came from Martin’s girlfriend and wicked freediver Elisabeth Kristoffersen. When she swims with a fin, it looks graceful and effortless. When I swim with a fin, it looks like hard work. First of all, she gave me various exercises to loose the stiff back and get the movement flowing through the body, while ignoring all other mistakes. This worked, since I stopped trying to focus on lots of things at once, and therefore getting none of them right. Then she made me swim with my new Glide Monofin, and although it’s a bit more work, the sense of shooting forward through the water with every kick is very nice indeed. I am beginning to see that this fin will take me to new places. To round things off she made me do a few sprints, although sprinting is maybe not the right word for what I was doing. Trying (and failing) to swim fast got my mind so much off technique, that a few things fell into place and when we analyzed the video afterwards, the whole thing did not look quite as ridiculous as before. There is hope. To let Elisabeth have the full experience, we dragged her to the gym afterwards to do weights, and then, my favourite, to the 70min interval spinning class I have been going to as part of the training schedule. Talk about anaerobic! To make the legs even more lactic, songs like Pink: Sober and Lady Gaga: Pokerface are perfect for holding your breath during the chorus. It’s a sure way to draw attention to yourself in the gym. I was getting nervous looks from my neighbour, who was obviously convinced that I was about to keel over any second. I think he might have been planning the CPR, just in case.

With Elisabeth Kristoffersen, in the gym:

Static sessions in between have been varied. A 5:01 was a highlight, but still far from six minutes plus – I think I might have to start packing. A few exercises with Elisabeth and a straw have pointed me in the right direction. I’ll report when I have beaten my pb of 5:08.

Some people have been asking me how exactly I am training, so here is an idea of what a session might look like, although these vary from day to day.

Dynamic:

1. 600m swim, breaststroke
2. 4 x 75m plus turn
3. 4 x 25m with small fins on the surface, on my back
4. 4 x 25m with small fins under water, relaxed, big, exaggerated movements
5. 4 x 25m sprint with small fins
6. 4 x 25m with the big fin, relaxed
7. 4 x 25m sprint with the big fin

Dynamic no fins:

1. 600m swim, breaststroke
2. 4 x 50m plus turn
3. 6 x 25m no fins, no arms
4. 6 x 25m no fins, no legs
5. 4 x 25m, focusing on the right number of strokes
6. 4 x 25m plus turn, focusing on the push-off and glide

Afterwards: 20min run plus weights: legs, back, stomach, arms.

Evening: go to bed at ten and pass out.

Record Attempt

2009-03-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

Readers of my blog might have noticed that I have been complaining about pooltraining, or lack thereof. So far, I have been able to make up a startling variety of (good) excuses for this, including such things as: was forced to work, was forced to look after sick boyfriend, was forced to go off to Aspen, snowboarding. Well, the last one is not an excuse, by all means, it’s called cross-training.

I have spent rather a lot of time in the bookshop in the last few weeks, which, due to the supremely miserable weather, means that I have spent hours looking out the window, at the rain, while intelligent people, such as my customers (well. Most of them, anyway), stayed at home, watching mindless things on telly. This has provided me with plenty of empty time, some of which I filled by pondering the pool dilemma. I have reached the following conclusion: since attending regular training sessions over the winter months, say, twice a week, like normal people would, simply does not agree with my chaotic lifestyle, I need to apply the “Dahab Method” to my training. This means: take a couple of weeks, a month, anything, and train, train, train. Then do record. As it was looking like I was going to have to stick around in Berlin for the foreseeable future, now seemed as good a time as any. In what I might regard, with hindsight, as a moment of madness, I announced a record attempt in all three pool disciplines to AIDA Germany.

Sometime around four o’ clock this morning I began to realize what I had done. It means I have to swim at least 100m without a fin, 135m with a fin, and, if I go for static, too, hold my breath for over six minutes. I think I might save that one for later. The problem is, there is no bailing out this time. On the first weekend of May, judges, safety divers, camera operator, doctor and most likely a TV crew, will turn up to see me break a record. If that doesn’t provide me with motivation to train, I will give up on all pool disciplines this instant and take up knitting instead.

The whole thing is possible because my gym, Elixia, is allowing me to train whenever I like, plus bring a training partner. They are also letting me have the record attempt in their lovely pool. Then there is Martin Müller, who is my partner and coach throughout this project and has promised to kick me whenever necessary. We are planning to train six days a week. It’s amazing. Me. Training. In the pool.

Wish me luck!

Altitude training

2009-02-25T09:12:00.001-08:00

Ok, I admit, it has been a while since I have posted something here. This is because I had the idea in my head that this blog was supposed to be mostly about freediving and training for it. Minor problem is, I have not done any training, and we won’t even speak of diving. In fact, I have not seen the water since the WWF event in November. Someone mentioned that things might not be going quite in the right direction here, and I have to admit, I agree. Pooltraining? Pfff. Some of my freediving friends are complaining, since I keep promising to meet them at competitions and then don’t turn up. My excuse is, life is chaos. Excuse number two: I am always sick before a pool competition. Now don’t mention the word psychosomatic. It is not. Promise. I love pool training, love it, love it, love it. Next!

One thing I did manage recently was to go off to Aspen, Colorado, to indulge my addiction to snowboarding. The problem with Aspen is, once you have been there, you don’t want to go anywhere else anymore. They have the audacity to get around six meters of snow per year plus, and this is true, 300 days of sunshine. One might think that it’s not possible, but take it from a girl who has seen it with her own eyes: it snows at night. Apart from this, Aspen is unbeatable because the people who go there go to walk their doggies with little coats and boots around Burberry, Dior and Ralph Lauren. If they hit the mountain, it’s to take their designer shades for an outing to the sundeck at Cloud Nine restaurant. The advantage here is twofold: watching this crowd provides endless entertainment, and they don’t actually visit the slopes, so when you arrive with a group of crazed hardboot carvers, you essentially get your own private runs.

This is why the WCS (world carving session) is hosted in Aspen every February, and attracts around 200 boarders from around the world. The ones I arrived with consisted of Jörg Egli and his Pure Boarding crew, with 27 riders from Europe in tow. Ready to get onto the mountain, I turned up at the Buttermilk lift the first day, only to find that my lovely snowboard was in pieces. The topsheet was delaminating. While the board went in to be glued, I ended up with softboots. It hurt, is all I can say. How do people ride with these things? My attempts to do the same stuff I usually get up to with this set up left me with a giant purple bruise on my left shin. Fortunately, Jörg arrived and gave me one of his very own Swiss made boards, the Pure Boarding ‘Two’. After a couple of hours, I was having a great time. My declared mission this winter (well, apart from the ‘I will do lots of pooltraining’ one) is to finally improve my carving, and since Jörg and Remo were the best riders anywhere to be seen, they had me stuck to their heels the entire time, poor guys. Trying to follow them around all day generally results in two things. One: sore muscles. Two: humiliation. Jörg (the man has eyes in the back of his head) has a habit of whizzing by with his ear on the ground, only to turn around and ride in front of you, exaggerating your mistakes, showing you how silly you look, while laughing.

This got me so annoyed after a while that I managed to reduce the ‘looking stupid’ parts of my bad habits a tiny bit. The final turn around happened in the second half of the trip: My own board, although glued, had not survived past one morning and was consigned to the rubbish heap. Some battings of eyelids and “Jöööööörg, I have a problem…” later, he gave me the secret board to ride. Now I would like to declare at this point how grateful I am for this. There are a few names in circulation, most call it “the Thing”, although I think “Phantom” describes it more closely, since few people have seen it. Except me!

The morning I headed to the mountain with the prototype, I thought, here we go, get used to something new, again. Matters got worse when Remo, designated Pure Boarding movie maker, told me to wait for Ray, Steve, Ken and Dan (four ridiculously good riders from Canada/USA) and take them over to where he was filming. So instead of having a quiet moment to get used to the Thing/Phantom, I ended up having to perform my first few turns with it on camera, watched by a crowd of cheering guys. No pressure there. The amazing thing was, from the second turn onwards I most likely rode better than ever before. To find out what was really going on, I slipped away from the boysclub to go practice on my own.

I soon realized it was no mirage: the Phantom transformed my riding. When the guys caught up with me again (“where did you go?”), they wouldn’t believe that all that had changed from the year before was time spent glued to Jörg’s and Remo’s heels, and the Pure Boarding prototype under my feet. Needless to say, I instantly informed Jörg that he could not have the board back till the end of the trip. I might have batted my eyelashes, or maybe it was the huge grin I had on my face, but behind all that tough guy persona he is a soft hearted man and can’t say no. What followed where some of the best boarding days I ever had. Check out the ghost carver riding the Phantom at Aspen Highlands on

I was now in full swing and busy trying to lay down some turns. Since the end of the trip was approaching rapidly, this was all I wanted to do. I should have known there would be trouble when I headed to Highlands after two nights of snowfall, with seven men. All was well until we had a hot chocolate break and someone informed us that “the bowl” would open in thirty minutes. Here is a picture of the (in)famous Highland Bowl:

This is what you do: take the chairlift up to 3500m. Then hike up to 3779m. Then ride down. Piece of cake. Tiny problem: me with my little lungs and low blood pressure at nearly 4000m. Hiking. I get dizzy when I put my bindings on at 2500! I was having visions of struggling up the ridge behind a bunch of superfit guys, who would be at the top waiting for me for anything between 45min to half a day. No way was I going to get myself into such a mission. Of course I had not really counted on Remo and Jörg. Remo: “you are coming”. Well.

Twenty minutes later, I was on my way up the ridge. Remo told us we could get out before the top. Problem is, I don’t do too well with a challenge, so if there is a crowd of guys headed all the way up, all the way it is. This meant that the whole enterprise was going to hurt (a lot) and required a plan. The only one my oxygen-starved brain could come up with at this point was: don’t faint and fall off the ridge. So whenever my vision got blurry around the edges, I stopped for a breather. Just as I was trying to remember whose bad idea this had been, and who to blame for the misery (a man, obviously), I was comforted by the sight of Steve, collapsed in a heap of snow. At least I wasn’t the only one suffering. I thought this was the appropriate moment to teach him a German word which had been going through my mind, and was perfectly suited to the situation: “SCHEISSE”. I think he liked it. An hour later, we arrived at the summit, where I immediately went from hot to freezing cold. After some slapping of backs and taking of pictures, we had a blast coming down in the powder. The phantom board behaved itself beautifully, hardening my resolve to not ever give it back.

Jörg, looking not at all in pain, bastard, halfway up:

If you want to see some fantastic riding (the demons in the red jackets are Jörg and Remo), take a look at this. More on the Pure Boarding website: www.pureboarding.com

Thanks to pure boarding for a great trip!

Berlin Championships

2009-02-25T07:36:00.000-08:00

Back to freediving, which is after all what this blog is supposed to be about. The Berlin Cup was held last Saturday, a week after I arrived back from Aspen. The whole time I was over in Colorado, I was telling myself that I was in fact preparing daily for the competition: it’s called altitude training. Since Aspen town is at 2000m, and most of the skiing around 3000+, I thought it would have some kind of effect. I did try a few breath holds, to maximise the efficiency of the stay. One was a short table, done dry, on my bed. It’s simple: hold for one minute, exhale, take a breath, hold for a minute, see how many you can do. A nice, straightforward CO2 table. Usually I manage between 12-17 of them. So I took a breath, held, and started contractions after about 15seconds on the first hold. It just got worse from there. I think I gave up after a torture of eight. Amazing what 2000m will do to you.

Things improved a little towards the end of the week, when I was clearly getting adapted and managed to do a 2min+ hold on the chairlift at around 3100m, stopped mostly by the guys demanding answers to their intelligent conversation. Just as I was beginning to feel pleased with this result, the low point of my altitude training experiment approached. After the dizzying experience of hiking up the highland bowl, perfectly designed to show you just how un-adapted you really are, we headed straight to the restaurant/bar at the bottom of Highlands for a well earned drink. A couple of beers later, I was in a nice state of intoxication, when the male crowd, led by Dan, decided it would be fun to see an insane freediver hold their breath. The excuse I have for letting them talk me into this is: I was drunk. Timed by Ray, I promised them two minutes, while pinching my nose. Watched by a bunch of beer drinking men. Not the most relaxed dry static, and amazingly unpleasant. Memories of doing a fairly easy pb of 5:08 at the worlds in September seemed distant, to say the least.

Still, I considered myself well prepared for Berlin. My doctor was of a different opinion, though. She forbid the pool for the time being due to an infection of the nasal passages and sinuses, about to be chronic, with said passages being swollen shut. This is the kind of news that makes depth freedivers panic – equalization, goodbye.

Will Winram and his wife Michelle came to stay at my house for the competition, and Will was pleased to hear that I would now be available to coach him. This job started the night before the comp, when he realized he left his wetsuit with Fred Buyle in Brussels. What were those two doing there, apart from eating chocolate and watching movies? We managed to fit him into my 5mm bottoms, but no way were his chest and shoulders going to get into my top. Some searching provided him with a mixed, but full suit, one minute before he had to enter the water for his warm up, which was possibly not the best way to prepare for static. Coaching him, it quickly became clear that his mind wasn’t really on the task at hand, and at three minutes he had enough, disqualified himself, and decided to continue preparation for his upcoming sharkdiving trip (freediving with great whites) with more chocolate.

Meanwhile, I had fun being a safety diver in one of the static competition zones for a change. This was interesting, as I got to see how differently static is approached by various divers. Me, I am still looking for help in this painful discipline. Did I say that? I meant to say: wonderful discipline. I love static. Honest. Love it.

The performance of the day were the dives of Danish man Jesper Stechmann. Jesper has been freediving for quite a while, but recently he has dropped a barrier and now there seems to be no limit in sight. Every time I see him, he does a personal best with enviable ease. After putting some 20sec on his static pb, he went on to do a dynamic of 211m. When he came up, he was still clean enough to wink at coach Elizabeth Kristofferson. I need to find out what his secret is. Special Joghurt? Danish Bananas? Please don’t let it be pooltraining.

It was kind of fun to be at a competition without competing, sort of like a holiday. Still, it was also a bit weird, and as soon as I was there I felt I should be getting ready for something. I am newly motivated now and have asked Martin Müller to buy a stopwatch for me, so static tables are coming up. Since I want to go to the indoor world championships in Aarhus this year, I guess I best start to make friends with chlorine soon. Suggestions for motivation are welcome. Tried chocolate after diving, is not good enough, I just end up eating the chocolate without the diving. Anything else? Anyone?

I promise to update on the training/life chaos situation soon. Thanks to all you guys who rode with me in Aspen, next time I’ll be up to four minutes, drunk in the bar at altitude. Now there’s a goal. Weren’t you supposed to set yourself training targets? We might be onto something here already.

New Year

2008-12-31T05:41:00.000-08:00

Right, this is the last day I'm working in the bookshop this year. Hurrah! There is just one small detail to be considered: I am working in the bookshop on the first day of the NEW YEAR. Now then. Somewhere in there is a mistake. I've been having this "about to finish everything, hoooolidaaayyy"-feeling recently, but am beginning to realize that it is a trick of the mind, much like an optical illusion. When I'm looking at the new year, it seems very distant, like there is a long strech of time between old and new. Clearly, I've been looking through a set of goggles (maybe fluid goggles? The one time I put Rob King's on, all I saw was rainbows) that are creating a pleasant, but nevertheless unreal, distortion. Not only am I working tomorrow, but it will be a very hard day. A new window day. It's worse than usual this time, since I have no idea what to do, and am still hoping that inspiration will come to me sometime in the night. Maybe I should put a sign up now, saying: "stay away from Anna tomorrow, everyone, she'll be in a foul mood, grumbling and cursing all day". I'll report on the state of window soon.

Meanwhile, I've had a night out with Stavros and Panagiota, the organizers of the mediterranean freediving meeting. They are in Berlin so Stavros can see what cold weather really looks like. Since they got here, it has been snowing in Athens. We spent the evening talking freediving, which reminded me that I have not trained since November. Stavros asked me if I did lungstreches. Answer: No. Did I know lungstreches? Answer: No. He has threatened to to teach me a routine, so it looks like I might have to have a new year's resolution and actually start working to become a better freediver. Maybe my lungvolume will grow from tiny to normal now?

Today I have a hangover, I accidentally celebrated new year with a lot of white wine last night. I have no watch at the moment, they all broke one after the other, so my excuse is I had no idea it was 2:30am when I left. I'm also sure the barman just kept filling up my glass when I wasn't looking.

Ok, here goes: New Year's Resolutions.

1. Lungstreches every morning
2. Train static (ugh)
3. Watch the white wine
4. Keep an eye on those barmen
5. Get off the two-buiscuit-one-coffee breakfast routine
6. Be nice to customers always
7. Throw the horrible customers out
8. Plan windows in advance
9. Empty the hoover bag

Anything else? Don't think so. Oh yes: improve in my new addiction sport, rock climbing. I have decided that rock climbing must be fantastic training for us freedivers. Somehow it's much easier to get to the climbing center than to the pool. I am looking at it as a type of mental training. It has to be. Right?

Four pm. Time to close the door quickly before any more people come in. Have a great New Year everyone.

Yellow fish...

2008-11-06T03:22:00.000-08:00

Phew. I am back in the bookshop, more or less paint-free, although I keep finding yellow spots here and there, I guess it will only be a matter of a few weeks until they all come off.

Six freedivers got up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 on Monday morning, to be transfromed into fish by a bunch of crazy (but amazing) bodypainters. One would have thought that five hours would be enough, but as the artists told me, they always use up all the time they have and barely finish. I guess they never heard of such a thing as 'official top'.

Anyway. Here we were, all a bit sleepy, in a pool in Berlin. First of all, we all got to strip down to a pair of invisible knickers. The guys had the added pleasure of having to shave their hairy chests, and legs, too - I have to say, both Ulli and Martin looked a bit strange. Since all women are hairless by nature, we had no such problems. The only issue I had was that my wonderful painter, Matthias von Matuschka(check out his work on www.muschka.de) was in charge of the artist's team, and therefore busy sorting out all manner of problems rather than painting me. Since everyone else was starting to look a bit colourful (mostly Elisabeth Kristofferson who made a lovely whaleshark) while I was still sitting around in my undies, this got me a little twitchy, especially since we didn't even know what fish I was going to be. Other fish were: a whaleshark, an orca, a lionfish, a clownfish and a turtle.

When Matthias finally got round to switching on his airbrush, it quickly transpired that I was going to be a bright yellow fish. That is all I knew until I ran out from under his brush at four minutes to official top. He was still trying to paint my hands at this point, wich wasn't very successful since it did not dry and came off as soon as I hit the water. Oh well, the rest stayed on more or less. Acting the fish was a rather strange experience, especially when I didn't even know what I looked like. I got pretty tangled up in the net, which made Martin Müller and his safety crew pretty nervous. We were thinking: if one of us gets properly caught and needs to be rescued, that will make the headlines for sure. Still, this did not seem to be the way the WWF wanted to go, so we behaved ourselves and stuck with acting the drama.

A drama it is: apparently, 1 million tons of fish per year are discarded as unwanted bycatch in the north sea alone. Whales, turtles, dolphins drown in the nets every minute. For anyone who spends as much time in the water as we divers do, this is a horrible thought. I had no idea it was that bad. The WWF publishes a list of the fish they consider ok to eat and the ones we should boycott. Check it out before you buy fish in the future.

I finally saw what a funky yellow reef fish I was when I went into the shower to wash off the paint. This was a major mission, it took us well over an hour of scrubbing with the green, scratchy side of a washing-up sponge to get most of it off. I think I have removed the top layers of skin along with the colour. I got so caught up in scrubbing everything, that I was peering over my shoulder and could just see that there was something there - all my efforts did not seem to get it off. Then I realized it was my tattoo.

You can see a short video of the whole thing on http://www.wwf.de/themen/kampagnen/beifang-kampagne/foto-event-in-berlin/

Now it's back to trying to do pooltraining, which is still not happening. Eindhoven is in a couple of weeks. Oh dear.

Rainy Day

2008-10-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

To remind me of warmer days and sunshine:

Enjoy!

Back in Berlin

2008-10-28T04:57:00.000-07:00

I am back in Berlin, looking after my much neglected bookshop. Once again the 'super-simple' window decoration I had in mind turned out to be a three day project, during which time I turn into Miss Grumpy and it is best if no one speaks to me. The result is attracting customers though. The ones I have chased off during those three days may dare to come back eventually, too. I hope.

Anyway, so here I am behind my 'Nobel-Prize' window, looking at the rain. I was about to complain about the wheather but have realized that I have revoked the right to do so when it came to me that I have spent 12 weeks freediving in hot places this summer. I guess I have used up my entire share of sun for one year, and am now condemned to darkness until January 1. Too bad for the rest of the people in Berlin.

After having lots of fun diving deep, with some new German records and a PB in constant weight (finally hit 60m, hurrah!) I am now supposed to train in the pool for the upcoming competition in Eindhoven. I am beginning to be convinced that pooltraining has been jinxed for me - whenever I want to go, something happens and I can't get out of work, or have to travel somewhere or similar. How to improve? Maybe start monofinning in my bathtub...thoughts?

BODYPAINTING...

Meanwhile, I managed to get to the pool at Down Under in Berlin yesterday. Thomas Schaal's dive center has a 4m deep private pool on the premesis which they kindly let us use to do some tests for a WWF event I am involved in. As divers, we naturally want to support the world wildlife fund in it's efforts to protect the underwater world. They have a new project: to highlight the problems with unwanted catch (bycatch) in commercial fishing, which plays a big part in the depletion of many endangered species. Next Monday the campaign kicks off with a press conference/ media event at a pool here in Berlin: six freedivers get turned into seacreatures by bodypainting artists and are caught in a net, which the press can see/photograph through an underwater window.

In answer to the question what kind of a seacreature I might be turned into, my charming friends suggested things such as dugong, seahorse and some kind of worm dwelling in the tideflats. Lovely. Anyway, two artists came to test which paint might stay on in the chlorine infested waters of a public pool and which might not - they painted me with all kinds of samples. I looked vaguely like a whaleshark, or maybe like the man from mars. Most of the paint stayed on. When I say 'stayed on', I mean it. Don't think that stuff that survives the pool chemicals just comes off with soap. Bits of me are still green and I have resigned myself to looking more the part of the fish-woman (apparently a mermaid is not an endangered species - damn)than ever for the time being. Watch the news on Monday and see me play the part of a huge whale.