A quick update, since work is busy.
A hectic day at work followed by a 5K run, an hour of pilates and dry Table A...I'm exhausted. Stop sniggering all you marathon-running friends, I can hear you! Over the last week I've been doing dry Table A (CO2 with a breath-hold time of 1'55) every other day, and swimming or hitting the gym pretty much every day. However, this whole full-time work thing is really getting in the way of freediving, and blogging about freediving. It's incredible how quickly you can become addicted to this!
A mystery freediver has selected the "Pfshhhh, that's nothing, I can dive to over 85m without fins" option on my poll (see halfway down the column on the right). I'm willing to bet a plane ticket to London that it's just one of my friends messing around. This is because a quick search of Apnea.cz reveals that there are only 2 freedivers in the world who can dive to over 85m constant weight no fins: William Trubridge and William Winram. If we widen the field to include free immersion, that's still only 13 freedivers in the world achieving a depth of over 85m. If I'm wrong and an amazing freediver has somehow found their way to this site, please can they let me know and I'll consider handing over a plane ticket to London a small price to pay for a few tips ;-p.
If you're curious to find out what the current World Records are in each freediving discipline Apnea.cz is a great place to look. The database of freedives is user-friendly and easily searchable. It also includes pictures and videos of each dive if they are available. The video of William Trubridge's CNF dive to 101m is incredible to watch! I can't imagine the physical and mental effort involved in reaching 101m and then having to work hard on most of the ascent to overcome the negative buoyancy while your oxygen levels are low and your muscles are burning. Speechless.
I've done the "homework" Mark set us in Part I of my Introduction to Freediving course: to complete three successive dry static breath-holds with a couple of minutes rest in between. Here are the results:
1. 2'22
2. 3'00
3. 3'18
The results exhibit a clear trend; dry static time increases with each repetition (at least up to three repetitions). Why? Well, I'm reading around the answer to this question, which relates mostly to the body's (amazing) physiological response to apnea. I'm keen not to oversimplify it or make any errors, so I'll get back to you once I've done some thorough research and can articulate the answer clearly. Any pointers to posts/books/academic articles will be much appreciated.
London Freediving have kindly featured the challenge on their news page; you can get their take on it here. Looking forward to joining Mark Harris in the pool again on Thursday evening for Part II of the Introduction to Freediving course. This week...dynamic apnea!
I'll post about the second part of the course and about my visit to the London Diving Chamber later in the week. I'm hoping I can persuade someone to lend me an underwater camera so that we can take a short, and no doubt hilarious, video of my first attempt at dynamic :).
Congrats on the stunning homepage picture to London Freediving :-)
ReplyDeleteGracie, you could ask Trux (the guy running Apnea.cz site) to add you blog into tracked sources. A piece of news on Deeperblue.com simmilar to that one on Londond Freediving could do good marketing for your challenge as well.
Have a great time.
Thanks Amamarf...although you can see my not entirely tidy bedroom in the background! Can't believe I even get to share webspace with Liv Philip :D.
ReplyDeleteA lovely lady called Sara Lise who writes for DeeperBlue approached me about doing a short article on the challenge, which is great.
I'm generally a bit wary of emailing people out of the blue but you're right, it'd be a good idea to get in contact with Trux.
I did a PB today of 4 min dry static - a real boost :D. I did it a couple of minutes after finishing Table A feeling really relaxed an happy. Contractions way easier to ride than usual for some reason. Just got to translate this into better "wet" static time which will come eventually, I'm sure.
Hope your training's going well too :D
When I begin to freediving I only did max attempts every one or two months. The routine that I followed was that:
ReplyDelete- Lying on bed, 5 minutes of relax breathing.
- 2 minutes of slow and deep breath-ups.
- First Breathold.
- 2 minutes rest and second breathold... do this until the fourth one.
- 5 minutes of rest, two deep breath-ups and your final breathold!!!
Maybe you will see a difference