Already more than a week ago but worth mentioning here I think...
I have good memories of this place because last year I did my first and so far only 8 minute static in competition here. Like all Belgium competitions this one included all three disciplines. Last year I messed up my dynamic and nofins for various reasons. My body was still tired from the static (all three disciplines are done within about three hours) and I was very satisfied with the static result. This made that I had little motivation to endure the mental and physical challenges of long dives. In last years competition there were people with far more constant results who eventually won the competition. Usually I try to focus on the overall result and if the opportunity presents itself I try to grab it regardless of anything I wanted to do afterwards. There are only very few competitions I go to and who wins a competition is quickly forgotten. What counts more (for myself as well) is the place in the international Aida ranking and the best performances in each discipline. However, for me freediving is most of all about getting to know my body and mental side and work from/on/with that.
So my goal was to take first place in the overall competition. There were a couple more candidates for that spot (Sergio, Daan, Igor and some Belgium guys I knew little about) so this would be a challenge.
We started with static and I did a nice 7:08 which was 4 seconds less than Thomas Moureau. To tell the truth I did not like that ;-) . It's great for Thomas and I was hoping he would give the king of belgium (pool) freediving (Jean-Pol Francois) a good scare. JP always had by far the best performances so it is good for him to get some competition. Apparently belgium national records can be set at any training as long as there are judges present. This made the 7:12 from Thomas the best belgium static performance in competition! (not 100% sure I have the facts straight here, but this is what I've been told) Number three in static (Sergio) was about 30 seconds behind us. This translates to 13.2 meters Sergio had to win back in the next two dynamic disciplines.
Dynamic with monofin: my recent longer dives have all been done in perfect circumstances (one of the best 50 meters in the world) while my personal best in a 25 meter pool was about 50 meters less. This pool in Namur was only 1.1 meter deep on the shallow side but I was training that a lot lately and did no longer feel the stress of having to make many turns with my monofin. I was eager to improve my p.b. here. Nothing much to say about the dive itself, it was not very interesting. I could keep motivating myself to continue swimming although I had better days. I surfaced a bit to my own surprice. Still a good distance with 169 meters but soon after I knew I could and should have made the turn to have the 200 in sight for future dives. But I didn't and had to make the best from what I've got. Sergio did a personal best in competition with 175, Igor also did a personal best (I hope he picks up a monofin and starts training with that), Thomas got no points because he forgot to take of his noseclip during the surface protocol and Daan did a nice 157 dive with cursing from beginning to end. Very quick swim - I can tell you that! :-) So one happy Sergio, one slightly irritated me, one steady as ever Igor and one bouncing Daan. Obviously I'm forgetting many performances here. The results can be found at the link at the bottom of this post. One thing I'd like to say is that training partner and friend Danny Martherus made a huge dive of 132 meters (I'm in that video to somewhere) after only training with a monofin a couple of times. Way to go Danny!
Dynamic without fins: people getting tired. Dreaming more about big plates of pasta then about long dives with lactic acid filling up their arms and (most of all) legs. The funny thing is that people that don't train DNF ofter or have personal bests way below their capabilities did very well. I liked what the dutch women did with Judith's easy looking 100m, Natascha's over 50m and Pauline's almost 50 meter dive. To bad Nanja had a mouthdip and therefor a red card but that's just good motivation for her to pick up training more seriously again.
I thought Sergio would swim before me and that I would therefor know what I had to do. I was mistaken and I had to go first knowing that his best in competition was 125 meter. I swam and swam and swam some more until I was getting close to 125 where I knew that every meter would drastically increase my changes. After the 125m turn I did one more stroke and realized I had not been this close to my personal best and national record (153 meters) in about 18 month. I still felt good, made the turn and surfaced at 155 meter. I had a samba/LMC (loss of motor control) for a second which I did not feel coming but managed to hold it together and got a white card. The tiredness of the long day and the fact that the lines between the lanes could not be trusted because they were extremely loose both must have played a role here. I guess about half the red cards in this competition were caused by those lines and because neither of the four floaters we were handed by the safetydivers had enough buoyancy to keep us afloat. They should tape a few together instead of keeping two seperate floats per safety. Anyway - Sergio did his nofins, which was 100 meters, his limit for the day after his 175 dynamic. So I could have swam 62 meters less to still win the competition. But of course I'm stoked that I did more than that.
This is the movie Daan shot of the 155 meter dive. At the end he gets exited because he didn't see the record coming and neither did I to be honest. :-)
The competition results can be downloaded from here.
It's been three years since I started to swim with a monofin. So I thought it would be funny to compare my previous dives with the first one I recorded..... Enjoy yourself!
Thanks to Jorg and Sanne of Shark Freediving for organizing the competition as well as for safetying. And all my warms to everyone that supported me in and outside the pool. You know who you are!
Now have some more fun and let's work on taking another step, someday soon preferably...
Yesterday I added a full 29 meters to my personal best in training. So this is not a national record unless I repeat it in a competition. But still.. I'm very proud and happy I showed (myself) that I could do this.
Distance: 187 meter Divetime: 3 minutes Speed: 1.04 m/s
During the 12th long night of apnea in Berlin 'my' dutch national record in dynamic freediving (158 meter) was broken by Daan Verhoeven with a 169 meter dive. It felt a bit strange but a bit to my surprise I did not feel the immediate desire to get it back within the hour. I mean - I did a good attempt in doing so but I just seemed to not have the drive that Daan showed the last couple of weeks. So congratulations to him and I am very happy that stepping away from competitions for a year followed by hard training rekindled his love for competition.
My dive was a bit more messy than I anticipated and there were a few occasions that I wanted to abort but somehow made the turn at 125 with the 'plan' to come up short after. However, in a split second I realised I promised Kerian Hibbs to do four more kicks when I wanted to surface. So I did and that made a grand total at 141 meter.
Last wednesday I tried to find a relaxed state of mind by doing the kind of visualization that I talk about in my previous post. I have so far not done a real max dive with my monofin. The reason is that I can seldom find a way to pass the hard middle part of the dive. So I stopped the no-warmup, no-breathup preperation with the goal to do a max dive not too long from today. When that is behind me I will first abandon my (short) breathup again and then the empty lung statics I now do as warmup.
Note that I'm not wearing my new BlueSeventy Nero Comp suit because the water is only 26C which is too cold for me to relax in without some neoprene (Orca Apex2 in this case).
The relaxation worked great and I came up when the dive started to become harder. This gave me confidence on which I want to build in the coming weeks. It must have been one of my most relaxed dives over 100 meter. Here's the video, see for yourself..
I've been working on my monofin technique by swimming >1km underwater almost every training. Also the local finswimmers club is kind enough to show me every friday-evening what stamina real finswimmers are made of.
What I did not train much were longer dives. I should be able at this point to improve my personal best. So last month I promised someone (+myself) that I would go over 158 meters before the end of the month (one day to go, not going to happen) and do 175 before the end of the year. That first part did not work because what I train during all those 50-100 meter training dives is not the same technique I enjoy most with max attempts. During training I try to make many strokes with good technique, during max. attempts I try to make as little strokes as possible without loosing too much speed or relaxation. This means that during longer dives I am fighting a battle between what I think is right and what feels right for me at this time. The end result is lesser technique because I don't keep my legs straight and not feeling relaxed either. The video below is a good example of what might happen... (the microphone of my camera is broken causing a lot a white noise)
After this there were a couple more attempts that were even less successful. pfff... what now? I don't know, perhaps I should have called it a day. I did have the good feeling of seeing Daan swim a personal best of 166 meter so the 1 hour drive both ways was well worth it anyway. But instead I swam a lot of lanes with difference styles... Continues kicks, kick+glide, kick-kick-glide, armstroke-kick-kick-glide and the one I liked most armstroke-3xkick-glide. I know some people will frown upon this but to my surprise more and more people say they think it will suit me very well.
One day later I was doing some drywalks (apnea walks) and realized I could try to visualize my dynamic dives. Because when I visualize something it's easy to play a video of some idyllic peaceful beach with blue water where seagulls fly. It is also possible to visualize my dynamic dive but when I get to the hard part of the dive I have to tell myself that it's going to be hard and that I do a turn, glide, stroke, etc.. It all gets a bit mental and then I don't feel it anymore. But when I vizualize while doing an apnea walk or an empty lung static things get much more realistic and hence a better training. And the great thing is my turns can be perfect, my glides as short or as long as I want, whatever is needed to fit a 200 meter dynamic in the duration of a breathhold.
Later that day I swam 128 meter with one armstroke and three kicks per 25 meter lane, a nice swim!
FreeWC09 aka The 5th Individual (indoor) AIDA World Championship 200. Aarhus (Denmark) (mon) August 17th - (sat) August 22nd.
I arrived in Aarhus a week before the official competition and met and trained with New Zealand kiwis Kerian Hibbs and Darrell Cottle. One of these days Darrell told me about Kerian's monofin technique where he includes an armstroke between each kick&glide. Now - that is interesting, I thought! During training back home I tried that a couple of times and kind of liked it, apart from the fact that people were laughing at me. ;-) But here in Aarhus I played a little more with it, liked it even more (knowing that a 200m+ guy uses it) and decided to use it during my dynamic dive later on. This experimenting worked great for me, it took the tension a bit of and things started to be fun.
The whole experience of such a well organized event is great anway! So many legendary freedivers that I felt really humble. After a while everyone appears to be really nice and I felt myself a bit more nice too. The best thing surely is that my whole perception of what long times or distances are completely gets reset when you are so much part of things. Hearing how and how intense others train gives a great respect for that. It's a bit like new years day where most walk away with good intentions and some might even make changes for the better. Being part of this also gives a greater understanding of the dynamics of a multiday competition. The nerves, expectations, results of teammates, importance of sleep - everything is so much more intense, glowing, even exploding during the finals.
My goals, my perfect competition, would be to get in the b-final with nofins, a-final with static and a dutch national record (>150m) with dynamic. I did not think about the performances I wanted to do in those finals, just getting there was the goal. I achieved two out of three of those goals.
I will write little about my teammates here because they have or will write their own reports. They all did great performances but there was also some foolishness and bad luck going on.
Saturday Arrival of teammates Nanja, Arjen and Erik. Team NL: Erik Skoda, Nanja van den Broek, me, Arjen Costerus. They had a 'long' drive from The Netherlands to Denmark and we were happy to have them over to our rented house to have so good old pasta with salmon.
Sunday Greena aquarium freediving Teammate Erik was having the first day of his course to become an international freedive judge. Nanja, Arjen and I had a two our swim with big fish, small sharks and huge eels. The salt-water aquarium was about 5 meters deep and we had not enough weights with us by a long shot. It was fun, relaxed and good training. Most of the session we were doing empty lung swims. :-) The sharks were not at all as impressive as we hoped. There was also another aquarium there with the bigger sharks. This is what we really came for, but we were not allowed in there! I was glad that the man from the aquarium did not bend for Nanja's charmes!
We spend an hour in another pool in Aarhus to train. But not for me, I needed to rest.
Monday training, fine tuning the weights, etc.
I did a few laps with my monofin, met up with Ulf Dextegen. I also helped Nanja a bit with DNF technique and proper weighting.
Tuesday Parading through the streets of Aarhus
Wednesday DNF qualification heats This was the first time that my family came to watch me. I was a little nervous but most of all I wanted to not have a blackout. Because my family already saw a handful of those the first few minutes they arrived.
My first goal was achieved, 145 meters, on the one hand I was happy and very satisfied with that and on the other hand I knew I could have swum a few more meters. At the end of the video you can hear me say that I held back. It looks a bit arrogant now that I look back at this, a bit to calculated too, maybe. But my first swim at such a major competition was done and I did what I came for - good!
Thursday STA qualification
I couldn't get a smile on my face this day. At the beginning of the video you can see me trying to smile but what came out was something that only The Joker from the latest Batman movie would have been happy with. I think I had put to much pressure on myself for static this time. After 5:35 I aborted the hold, a far cry from the 8:01 I did earlier this year. It just happened and I was pretty upset about it for a while. A bit angry at myself!
DNF finals A few minutes before official top, my good friend Danny Martherus arrived with his two children to watch the dutch team and be part of this adventure. This made me very happy and with them in our extended family the next few days were a lot more fun! Thank you Danny!
I was in the b-final but after just 80 meters I stopped swimming because I wanted to surface. I told myself I would not be happy with that. After a few more meters swimming I made a decision (it did not just happen like with static) to surface because I was not having fun. This actually made me satisfied because I did this for myself.
Friday STA finals Static finals was exciting to watch. Very close silver and bronze medals (within 5 seconds, at around 8:30) for Alexey Molchanova and Ulf Dextegen. The coach of Alexey was making a bit of a mess of things by first going through the competition zones 30 seconde before official top. She swam over the heels of athletes in full concentration :-(. At the end of Alexeys performance she kept her hand to long on his shoulder when he was surfacing. This resulted in a red card. They protested and won that protest because it was not visible on the official camera. Now at this point Ulf or the current no. 4 could/should have protested with their own video material so Alexey got silver. It's a stupid rule, but as long as it is in existance it should be followed obviously. Guy Brew continued for another 15 seconds, surfaced and did a surface protocol that seemed to be in slow motion but was still in zero seconds flat. The funny thing is that these three guys just did a performance under big pressure that I did never even did when fully relaxed but only the surfacing of Guy impresses me. It's not just the excellent times and distances that got recalibrated in my head, it's the different ways to approach freediving that make for a fresh wind in my mind.
DYN qualifications Now this was going to be fun! My heart is with static (and DNF) but my focus for the last couple of months has been with dynamic.
I apologize for the quality of the next movie. Photo camera's should have better lenses and a higher resolution when used for filming. (and they should be waterproof to at least 100 meters but that's another story)
This was the third and last dutch pool record that I did not improve (have/own a record sounds strange, doesn't it?). And I really really wanted it. I've tried in a few smaller competitions before but the fact that I new I could made the pressure to big or not fun anymore. Not this time. The evening before I cleaned the slate with training tables symbolically and I wrote 'swim!' instead. Nothing more, nothing less, the dive was great I was fully concentrated on what I was doing or on my next stroke at the most, I was not tensing up when I reached 150. I had no ambition to swim much further to try for a b-final (surfaced at 158 meters). I was not looking forward nor back at the previous day, I was just doing it. Freediving is nice!
Saturday DYN finals, award ceremony, party time! Sorry wasn't there. You have to find other reports to read about freedivers getting drunk after one beer like a 16 year old. I did hear Arjen over my carstereo on the way back home. He phoned in exciting realtime reports of the finals. I wished I could have recorded it. The life reports during the competition were great but if we ever need someone else to do that job I would gladly nominate Arjen!
Thank you family Thank you teammates Thank you safeties Thank you organization Thank you big old body full of lungs Thank you mind for not going crazy just yet And thank you all for inspiration!
[P.S. for people with a facebook account - more pictures can be seen here]
Team NL: Erik Skoda, Nanja van den Broek, me, Arjen Costerus.
