Oct 21 2006
Timing of a peak performance…
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…
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Hoi Sanne,
Wat jammer voor je dat het niet zo goed ging als gepland! Maar als je naar je trainingsresulaten kijkt, zit het er dus wel in…lijkt me wel een worsteling. Volgende keer beter!
groetjes,
Elly
Translation:
Too bad things didnt go as you planned! But if you look at the trainingresults, it’s possible…looks like a struggle to me. Better luck next time!
He die Sanne,
Ben blij dat Glenn en ik niet de enige waren die er een zooitje van hebben gemaakt in Wiesbaden. Bedankt voor je support om ook eerder te stoppen
Volgende keer gaan we er weer voor. Was een lang jaar met veel wedstrijden.
gr. Peter
I’ll have to thank you and Glenn aswell for competing along side me this year, good to see the freediving going forward!
Always a pleasure competing with you guys and ofcourse having fun outside of the pool !
Congratulations with a good season for you too !
[...] Just back from Wiesbaden last weekend. We had some fun and it was not exactly how planned the competition, but nevertheless fun. You can read Sanne his story over here. Winner with the men was William Winram from Canada with a static of 7:04 min and a 139 dynamic without fins distance. Complete results for the men. For the woman Claudio Rollero (CH) was the winner with a 5:13 min static and a 116 meter dynamic with fins. Complete Women results here.All in all nice competition but not what we expected from last years experiences. But probably we’ll be there again next year, because of it’s perfect German organizing skills. [...]
[...] Last time Sanne did a wet static it was during the Wiesbaden competition in 2006, already 6 months and 8 days ago. So we were very curious if my dry/wet conversion calculation would be right. I would already be happy if he did an easy 5 minutes +, so that he would come close to his current competition record 5:20 min. In the end Sanne did a good and clean 5:33 min, so it was a very good performance and a new personal best is always great! First just take a look at the attempt and jump in half way; [...]
[...] First of all take a look at the performance of Sanne where he does a clean and easy 108 meters, which is his first dynamic with fins since 6 months. [...]