As we’re only just back from Wiesbaden we conclude my competition season for this year. It’s been a very good competition year, with a lot of positive developments. Although we had the competitions only for me to train in other situations and learn more about preparing and peaking in events, it’s been quite a succesful season.

Dynamic
Starting in Heemstede with a new PR of 109m in dynamic with fins, to improve it to 120m at Dordtdive 2006 and topping that new PR only one week later to 125m taking the first place in Huy (BEL). I conclude my dynamics in wiesbaden with a relatively bad performance, but only to learn that peaking is a sport in itself. There are only a few competitions a year and I need to improve peak preparation more.

Statics
My statics also start in Heemstede making that the first time in the water again since a long time, 4:30 is pretty ok for a start of the season. So Jorg and I decided to pin down my performace to a 5:15 for the upcoming Dordtdive and Huy competitions last June. I’d proven to myself that 5:20 and 5:15 in these events were easy to do and gave me good confidence on the path I’m currently on. Ending the statics for this year in Wiesbaden with a steady 5:11 with a 2,5 minute struggle with contractions, I’m very pleased to see where this is going !

Training
Training for and during the competition season also brought up valueable points me and Jorg can work from. I’ve proven myself to be able to peak in static performances with a top-time of 6:51 and a super session with 4 times a 6:00+ minutes within one hour. As my PR had been 5:32 in training, I’ve been able to set 10 new PR times. So this part is very promosing for the time to come.

My dynamics during the training sessions have been very steady aswell and have been improving on technique with my Gara 3000’s. In the weeks preceding the Wiesbaden event I’ve shown multiple 105m’s or more, so I went there pretty confident, but mentally there’s still a little mishap possible . So that’ll be a point I’m taking into my winter training.

Winter training
As the season ends… I’ll be going into my wintertrainings again on which I’ll report back here with some more details about these sessions. Main points I’ll be working on this winter will be the mono-fin techniques and getting the body back into shape for the new season !

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…

This weekend the 6th International Freediving Competition takes place in Wiesbaden (GER), also known as the Rhein Main Cup 2006. It’s an event which has 55 competitors inscribed with a total of 11 nationalities. I’ve been at the RMC 2004 competition and I was very pleased with the good organisation back then. As it was one of my first competitions in 2004, I’d like to see what improvements I’ve made since that competition.

Programm for Saturday 21st of October:
09.00 Registration
10.15 Welcome and regulation
10.45 Briefing (staff)
11.00 Warm up static
11.45 Start static
15.00 End static
15.15 Warm up dynamic
16.00 Start dynamic
19.30 End dynamic
21.00 Winners ceremony and dinner

For more information about the competition check this site.

As we had to relax the mind, for the intensive trainingweeks to come, the snow always brings just that kind of thing for us. Snowworld Landgraaf offers a 520m slope with a nice freestyle park in the middle of it. It’s the largest slope in Europe, so worthwhile to get Team Sharkbait boarding their way down the slope for almost 8 hours.  Here’s a video to give a little impression of the day..