Mermaid in Mytelini

I had to make a rather shamefaced confession to Mark at training on Thursday...

Mark obviously noticed that I have attended pretty much every training session and meet since the '100ft Freedive Challenge' began in May, since a couple of weeks ago he decided that it was time to have a few words with me about the importance of rest. Rest is important in any sport, including freediving, and actually helps to improve performance as well as reducing the risk of physical and mental "burn-out". Thing is, I'm not very good at it. I can't seem to get my head around the fact (and it is a fact) that improvements can be made by anything other than hard graft.

Mark suggested that an upcoming trip to Greece with relatives would be the ideal opportunity to take a break from apnea training, and I agreed. However, as the date of departure drew closer, the thought of being in the blue, warm Mediterranean without my monofin was keeping me up at night. I bubblewrapped my monofin, borrowed a good fin bag and flew to Mytelini...

I did rest in Mytelini.

I watched the sun come up...

Gazed on beautiful views...

Read lots of books...Blood and Sand by the BBC's Security Correspondent, Frank Gardener; Empire of the Summer Sun by S.C. Gwynne about the rise and fall of the Comanche Indians; The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, for about the 10th time; and the rather less exciting Contract Law by Ewan McKendrick.

And ate lots of delicious Greek food. Yum.

However, I also did some freediving! I joined Lesvos SCUBA, and we made two trips to the waters surrounding an island that lies just off Petra. Despite the Mediterranean being sadly overfished, the underwater landscape was stunning. As I was breathing up through my snorkel, I watched the shoals of black fish congregating above the pinnacles. I spiralled down the pinnacles, which were studded with black sponges and red starfish, and led down to a mosaic of huge slabs of rock. Following their dramatic countours to the sandy sea bed, I swam around the patches of sea-grass, watching the fish darting in and out and wiggling my fingers at the clams to make them snap shut. Lost in the experience, a few light contractions reminded me that I couldn't stay forever, so I kicked a few times before drifting slowly to the surface, watching the sun's rays flicker through the blue water...

I know some people who feel that this is the only kind of freediving worth doing, and who cannot fathom why anyone would spend time lying motionless in a pool or swimming up and down a line. It was certainly very different from static or line diving, but the experiences were so different that I don't think they can be usefully compared. I can't imagine giving up either. The freediving I did in Mytelini was a rest in one sense, since it allowed me to freedive simply for the joy of exploring the underwater landscape, without concentrating on reaching a target, or improving my performance.

You can't keep me away from training for long though, and I was back at the pool a couple of hours after my flight landed, sheepishly confessing to Mark that I hadn't taken his good advice. "I knew you wouldn't be able to do it", he laughed, shaking his head at me! Sorry Mark!

The pool session was fantastic - I've joined Tim and Nick's punishing dynamic no fins training schedule and am just about managing to keep up - more on this later... I'm off to Saltfree tomorrow and I'm really motivated to try and perfect the 100ft dive, since this is likely to be my last session before the challenge.

See some of you tomorrow - hope you are all enjoying the end of the summer :).