Results of AIDA Belgium competition in Namur

Competition in Namur (Belgium)

On March 29th 2009 a small and friendly competition will be attended by about 8 Dutchmen. I will try to give updates here during the competition.

Some of us feel our bodies fight upcoming cold and other nasty stuff. Let's just hope we win at least that battle!

Going great here. Most faces look happy. Mine for sure because I did a great 8:01 nr static. I was looking up to dynamic but even though it went okay at first I could not find the motivation to resist the first big urge to service. Because I announced high I got massive penalties and now have to fight for third place. Nanja ranks first right now and she should be able to keep that.

The competition is over now.

Igor Migunov came first with the men and Nanja van den Broek with the women!

Many personal bests were improved, many happy faces all around for all kind of different reasons. Laura and Pauline did especially well!

I messed up both my dynamic and my no-fins. I should have done better there, but I didn't, and that's okay too! My mental and physical limits were reached that day.

Thank you Daan Verhoeven for being my safety yesterday and it's an honour to be the first one you coached over eight minutes.

I will do another post later with details about the static.

Freediving on dutch television

Freediving was features on dutch television twice recently.

A nice ~45 minutes show with a popular dutch artist can be seen on this site (or here if you only want to see the movie). This was actually the first time on dutch tv that I think they properly explained why people freedive and they gave a good explanation about the risks involved without any of the usual hype-talk.

And then there is the following clip of new kid on the block 101.tv

Mental training

I've been too busy to post here with doing as little as possible, so now it's time for an update. 

I already wrote I went to a Tsa Lung workshop to pick up some relaxation and breathing techniques. Well, I did... and I didn't... I really don't know if I picked up anything useful. It was good to sit there and focus on the teachers sometimes incomprehensible english. I guess I expected more exercises and some more explanation about them. Anyway, it was the beginning of more mental training which is now slowly taking over from my days in the fitness factory.

Some days later Jouke, a training buddy, and I visited a local meditation afternoon crash course that was teached by Annet Polman at YogaMoves. This was one afternoon well spent I would say. Not too heavy material, quite useful, very down to earth (mostly :-)) It felt like a refreshment course which I apparently needed. A funny incident was that there was this beautiful brown eyed girl sitting next to me. During the break she told us that she was in love with the water. This started with her seeing The Big Blue where she also fell in love (big theme with her perhaps?) with the main actor. So I asked her - "the macho or the softy?" - the softy she told us. Mr. macho (soon to be married) Jouke, former european grappling champion was very very quiet after that :-). Thank you, whatever your name is!

Ehhmmm, I think I got distracted there for a minute. Where was I? Right! Mental... I did some more yoga sessions where I could stay in the moment better each time. I've not done any (near) personal bests lately but the fun and excitement is definitely back! 

(picture by don.mihai)

Monofin footpocket angle

Over the last two years I've tried or owned a few monofins. They are all nice fins but steady improvements over time. The Hyper Pro was my favorite (where I did 150 meters with once) until I received my new Waterway Glide last week. The Triton fin was nice for it's footpocket fit and better angle (compared to the Hyper Pro) but way to hard for me. 

I've made some pictures of a little experiment. I would be sitting on the floor with my legs and ankles as straight as possible. Then I'd put as many dvd covers underneath the end of the fin until the top of stack would touch the fin. Now, the Waterway scores best but I have to redo the test with a friend's (WW) monofin because I think I remember that his fin would almost touch the floor. Anyway, these are the results...

Leaderfins Hyper Pro (23 dvd covers)

Triton (17 dvd covers)

Waterway Glide (10 dvd covers)

BTW I've added 0.5kg between the footpockets to make the fin neutral at 1 meter.