Team Sharkbait

Beeeep… 6:00 am… I wake up to my alarm clock and start packing my stuff to meet Jorg at 6:30am. After a good journey of 3,5 hours we arrive at Wiesbaden (GER) where the 6th international freediving competition took place. After registration we found out I had to wait till 14:30 to do my static performance. So Jorg and I took a walk outside to let the fresh air relieve us from the high temperatures inside the pool.

So the relaxing part, which in this case means,  waiting for a long time. It consists of having fun and telling funny stories, with a few preparation details to discuss…But the biggest part is already planned out for this day so I know what to do.

With 30 minutes remaining till my official top I decided to go with my 2,5mm Elios suit, after checking the temperature of the small pool. With a final preparation static on the side of the pool Jorg told me it was ok to get to the lane I was being awaited by the judges.

Static Performance
With a good start and good preparation breath-ups I was aiming for my set goal of 5:30. But after a 2,5minutes struggle I surfaced at a stable 5:11, did my surface protocol and received a yellow card for performing under my announced time. Never the less Jorg and I learned a lot about this preparation and found out that we had peaked one week early… In the final 2 weeks before the competition I did a perfect 6:51, which is a very good training, knowing the current Dutch record is 6:45. Also during that week I breached the 6 minute barrier 4 times during one session. So peaking is possible, but as we are still exploring what’s best for me this is a positive improvement.

After my session the people tried to get attention for a specific freediver which should be out of his concentration if there was too much noise…well in my honest opinion: people are not more important as they do greater times than others. So keeping quiet for this man was no option of course. I did enjoy the man who was very happy, as he broke the 5 minute barrier for the first time and was very happy with that. More respect for this than arrogant freedivers. Freediving is about all freedivers and not a few in particular…we’re still only human.

Dynamic Performance !?
It starts… after quite a while I was finally ready to start with my dynamic. I lift my legs up from the comfortable chair I was sitting on, take the usual walk to the pool. And start my short breath-up to prepare for the water. 30s to official top, I enter the water to go on my mission for 125+m. First two laps went good on technique as Jorg was impressed about that part of training finally paying of…but the 3rd lap is where I met my ultimate disaster on the mental part. I just let myself down, my coach and my performance…if I can even call it a performance… Your guess is right, I deserted on a demoralising 75m. A good lesson for me to learn that although my training weeks preceding this event went great…performances for me come with a great mind overruling the normal response of the body.

 We put up some pictures from the event in our gallery, here…