3, (Radio) 2, 1, Dive Day!

It's now less than 24 hours before the 100ft Freedive Challenge for the MS Society and boy, have I been busy!

Tonight, I had the opportunity to talk about freediving and the 100ft Freedive Challenge on Radio 2 - the most popular radio station in the UK! I felt a little underqualified, having taken up freediving only 5 months ago. However, Matt, the presenter, explained that what they are looking for is enthusiasm for the sport - and I have that in spades! I hope that this came across and that I was able to express something of the freedom and beauty of freediving. Huge thanks to everyone who listened and contacted me to express their support. If you weren't able to listen live, you can listen to it here:



Graceonradio2 by samdive

If you're here because you listened to it, then thank you for visiting! This blog is a record of my training over the last 5 months as I have been preparing for the '100ft Freedive Challenge for the MS Society'. You can catch up with my journey to this point, less than one day before the dive, and learn loads about freediving from a beginner's point of view. If you're interested in learning to freedive, you can visit the websites of Saltfree and London Freediving, the clubs with which I train, or you can find a full list of clubs at the British Freediving Association website. Do it - you'll be amazed at what you can achieve!

Aside from writing frantic notes before the radio interview and texting pretty much everyone in my address book, I have been getting creative with my glue and marker pens to create some posters to put up around NDAC (because you're never too old for art and crafts). I also bought some disposable underwater cameras so that we can all take some silly photographs for the blog and to send to the MS Society fundraising team, who kindly telephoned me today to wish me good luck.

Mum can't make it to Wales for the freedive, but we spoke this evening and she said she'd be thinking of me and will have her fingers crossed. I have strict instructions to text her afterwards!

Saltfree are also organising a "Deepest Bikini Freedive at NDAC" competition this weekend - cross-dressing not only permitted, but encouraged! For every person that enters the competition, Saltfree will donate £5 to the MS Society. My amazing instructress, Hannah, has agreed to match whatever we raise as she sadly can't be there to watch. I'll also be missing my coach Mark, who is abroad, but I know both he and Hannah will be rooting for me :). I have a small suitcase-load of bikinis guys, so there will be no backing out with lame excuses!

It would be great if we could meet the £1000 target! This money will help the MS Society continue to fund research into treatments/a cure for MS and to provide specialist MS nurses - we've currently raised £750 and we're soooooo close! If you'd like to donate you can:

• visit my JustGiving page or



• text the code AEJE82 and the amount you want to donate, e.g. £7, to 70070

Thank you to everyone who has donated already!

Rather than dwelling on the fact that 100ft is approximately equivalent to a ten storey building, or 6 London buses stacked on top of one another, I will tonight be doing my breathing exercises and visualising the dive, step by tiny step.

There will be plenty of time to reflect on the last 5 months. I also have many people to thank, including the thousands of people who have visited this blog, and I will do so after the dive. I'm excited to see many of my freediving friends, who have given me so much support, in the morning. But right now I'm going to sleep, dreaming of the deep green and the challenge ahead...

Go Great Britain! and "No Fins? No Fear."

Go Great Britain!

Mike Board, Dave King, Georgina Miller, Liv Philip, Sara Campbell, Dave Kent, Ed Wardle and David Tranfield are the British athletes who will be competing at the AIDA Individual Depth World Championships, which is taking place in Kalamata, Greece from 15th - 25th September 2011.

The very best of luck to all of the GB athletes! Two UK records were broken at the 4th Mediterranean World Cup, which took place in Kalamata on 12th-14th September, so I expect that there will be some fantastic performances at the World Championships too!

We'll of course also be cheering on our freediving friends from all over the world! A full list of athletes competing can be found here. For those following online, there are some exciting action shots of the World Championships 2011 taken by Fred Buyle here. By perfect and beautiful contrast, Daan's captured some thoughtful portraits of freediving athletes from all over the world on his blog here.

As for me, pool training for the 100ft Freedive Challenge for the MS Society continues...and I seem to have inadvertently enrolled myself on a no-fins Training Schedule.

No fins is the discipline that I worried I might have a lot trouble with. Although I like swimming, there's no hiding that from a technical point of view I'm rubbish; I haven't been to a swimming lesson since I was at primary school. However, I'd surprised myself with a 15m CNF repeats at NDAC and decided to see what I could manage in the pool. I did a few lengths trying to copy the right technique and asked for some tips from Daan, which got me to 50m. I then decided to just see how far I could swim and made 70m, which was a bit of a surprise!

I was dimly aware that Tim, Nick and Ed were doing some no-fins exercises at London Freedivers and asked to join them at the next session, thinking that I might learn more that way. What I didn't realise was that they had recently started out on a Training Schedule. Note the upper case - it's relevant.

I soon realised that this wasn't just experimenting with a few exercises, this was a proper Training Plan of 12 weeks, with "easy", medium and hard targets. It has so far involved pain. Pain and comradeship, though, which makes it more fun!

One of the things I like most about training with Tim is that he assumes I'll be able to achieve anything I set out to do. He's also a great teacher, knowing when to encourage, when to give pointers, when to bribe me with Green and Blacks' Maya Gold chocolate and when to tell me to shut up and grow a pair.

This is fortuntate, because when he told me that the first exercise was 10 DNF repeats of 33m leaving every 1 and a half minutes, I was pretty sure I wouldn't get past length number two. Never mind being horribly aware of the fact that everyone else in the group had done well over 100m DNF and was much better than me.

The first week I tried this exercise, I couldn't manage ten repeats despite having lots of encouragement from everyone. I had to have a break and missed out length number 4. The week after I missed out half of length 5. For some reason the middle lengths, lengths 4, 5 and 6 are the hardest, physically and psychologically, especially when you start having contractions after just a couple of strokes. The last two sessions I managed all ten repeats - it's really motivating to see the difference that even a few weeks of training can make!

We've also been doing some other exercises to improve stroke technique, such as lengths using arms only and swimming exercises using just one leg. This is quite funny to watch; I was genuinely shocked by the difference between the strong kick of my right leg and the ineffective flailing of my left. I've struggled to get my weighting right but have almost got it sorted. Even though it's not quite perfect, the number of strokes I use for each DNF length has decreased and the time it takes me has decreased by about 10 seconds.

I haven't set any targets but I'm looking forward to seeing how much I can improve over the coming weeks.

The 100ft Freedive Challenge is approaching alarmingly quickly and although I can't do any CWT training between now and the day of the 100ft dive, my pool training is helping me to remain positive and focused. The MS Society have been helping me out with fundraising for the Challenge and have even been following the blog! I've been really touched by the donations that have been made by my Mum's colleagues at Durston House School and I know that Mum has been too - thank you!

Mum's been completely supportive of my decision to raise money for the MS Society but highly disapproving of the means by which I've chosen to do so (she suggested sponsored knitting instead). However, I've noticed that Mum's initial refusal to talk about freediving (on the basis that I was going to end up dead - it's the only time in my whole life I've ever heard her swear) has recently transformed into a kind of wary acceptance. She says she's now enjoying my blog - "Hi there" if you're reading, Mum!



My Yia Yia (Greek for grandmother), Mum and Me.

Breaking news from the MS Society!

It's been a brilliant 3 days, with news of a huge clinical trial into a potential treatment for MS (and two personal bests)!


Today, I left work and got on the Tube. It was quite late, so there were plenty of free seats and spare copies of the newspaper lying about. I put the 'Manual of Freediving' in my satchel and picked up the Evening Standard to see this story on the front page...





You can click on the picture for a link to the full article.


The MS Society and the UK Stem Cell Foundation are jointly funding a number of studies to investigate whether the use of stem cells can help to slow, stop, or even reverse the damage caused by MS to the brain and spinal cord.


My heart always skips a beat whenever a story like this appears. They appear surprisingly frequently but it's a long and difficult road from clinical trials to an effective and affordable treatment.

When someone you love has MS, you feel so helpless watching as they get progressively more disabled. They can get much worse almost overnight, as in a relapse or attack, or it can be a gradual process. Maybe one day out shopping you notice that their leg is dragging much more than usual, or you see their hands shaking while they try to hold a mug, or you start "hugging" by linking your little fingers, because proper hugs hurt too much. Mum doesn't really open up to me about her feelings about the future of her health (she's intensely private, and that's why I haven't mentioned her more on the blog). I imagine that for Mum, as for the poet Colette Waller who I featured in my last post, it ultimately comes down to being terrified of getting worse.


So the search for better treatments or a cure for MS feels like a race against time for my family. It's fantastic to see charities collaborating to fund international clinical trials into cutting-edge treatments for MS. If there is hope that by the end of these trials a treatment is in sight that might help my Mum, then I have all the motivation I need to get me to 100ft.

To learn more about this particular research, please see the video below:



Yesterday, I managed a PB in Static of 4mins 45sec!

The day before yesterday I managed a PB in Dynamic of 120m!

Mandy Mermaid and the Fluffy Contraction Bunnies...

Following my sports coaching session with Mark, I arrived at Saltfree eager to dive a few feet closer to the 100ft goal. However, on the boat over to the platform, I realised I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of no warm -up diving - I'd become rather attached to my usual routine of "fannying about at fifteen meters"!

In charge of the platform for the day was Mandy Mermaid. Mandy won the Mermaid Challenge, a competition run by Saltfree to discover new female freediving talent, and went on to set a UK record in dynamic! The most recent chapter of Mandy's freediving story is equally as inspiring. Last year Mandy developed Guillian-Barre Syndrome, a life threatening disorder in which the body's immune system attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis. After what she describes with characteristic understatement as "a bit of a struggle", her bravery (and her freedive training) helped her to beat Guillian-Barre. Back in her wetsuit, Mandy is not only excelling in competition, she also recently completed the Great North Swim to raise awareness of Guillian-Barre and fundraise for CLIC Sargent and the RNLI. To read more and donate, please click here :D.

I'd met Mandy once before and was really happy when she said that she liked the blog! I asked her for some advice. She summarised the theory behind no-warm up diving and explained that I might feel contractions earlier than usual with this approach. Seeing my grimace, she attempted to convince me that this was a good thing! "Contractions are actually helpful; it's your dive reflex kicking in!" she said. "Just imagine that they are happy fluffy contraction bunnies hopping around in your chest", she advised, before we both started giggling!

Fluffy bunny...



















Evil contraction bunny...

As planned, I did stretching and breathing exercises on the platform and then went straight for 30m. The dive was fantastic! The first ten meters (my least favourite part of the dive) passed quickly and felt foscussed, I enjoyed a long glide and was almost surprised when I reached the plate. There were a couple of light contractions on the way up but I knew to expect them and they didn't bother me. I did have to try and stop myself thinking of the contraction bunnies and grinning inanely though! So it's 98.43 feet and counting, everyone :D.

Photo of the 98.43 ft (or 30m) freedive below, courtesy of Harry:










With the 100ft almost in sight, I've had a little time to sit back and reflect. When I first set out on the challenge, diving to 100ft seemed an almost impossible goal. Now it's within reach I realise that I've been so concerned with actually being able to complete the challenge, I haven't been spending as much time as I should raising awareness of Multiple Sclerosis and the reasons why fundraising for the MS Society is so important.

I'd like to share the stories of two women with you; Genie and Collette. Genie is my aunt and godmother, and Collette is a poet, who I have never met. They have a lot in common; both have chosen to explore their experience of MS creatively, Collette through poetry and Genie through music. Both are positive and inspiring people. I hope that the story of each will go some way to explaining how deeply MS affects your life and how important it is that research continues to find a cure.

Genie
Genie is my aunt, who developed MS aged 24. She teaches jazz and classical piano, makes music and runs Stream Records, a label for disabled musicians.

It took 5 or 6 years before my MS was diagnosed, and I was quite relieved in the end. It was like having a golfball in the back of my head. I thought I was going insane! MS affects people in different ways. It affects my balance and my senses. I don't use a wheelchair, but it's obvious something is wrong with me. The doctors said things like, "well you're going to have to learn to live with this". It's not easy, but music helped. I started to write songs to express what I was feeling. I came across a disability magazine that was advertising for musicians and put together a band called 'Fish Out Of Water'. We got loads of gigs, became involved with Disability Arts, and I got funding. It was great. And I was a working musician! But the mainstream music industry doesn't want to know about disabled musicians. That's why I started to get their music out there. Some people suggested that I should register as a charity, but why does disability always have to be about 'charity'? I want to engage with the world on its own terms.Sadly disabled musicians don't break into the mainstream very often. But you can't give up. You have to make the world take notice.

Collette
Collette has a particularly aggressive form of MS. This article tells her story and in the accompanying video she reads from her collection of poems, 'Party Girl', before MS left her unable to speak or write. I've posted one of her poems below.

Scared
When I'm around
Others
Who have MS
It frightens the shit out of me
All these poems are saying just one thing
I'm scared of getting worse.

Please donate a few pounds (or more, if you like!) to the MS Society, to enable their amazing work to continue :).