As I reported earlier about my DNF, time for the details about the other two disciplines, the second day of the Coupe Dauphins, the disciplines static and dynamic with fins were on the program. The static wasn’t really what I’ve hoped for as I bailed out on a 2:58 with enough air to do more, but my mind was not strong enough to challenge the contractions.

I’m hoping to find myself back in how I used to be able to do static. I’ll keep trying though, loosening up during a competition is an essential point in this matter. Because the dry-statics in the week before, were no problem.

However the dynamic with fins was a success, we planned to do a 110m performance today. This is according the schedule that I’m currently following and last Friday I had to do a 105m and did 107m…so for today we planned the 110m, a clear goal!

Before I started my dynamic we went to Chamonix (Cha’Mone-X) to get up the mountain and enjoy some seriously nice views from the mountains (as the Netherlands don’t feature this a lot :P). Driving back to the pool and arriving about 20 minutes for my Official Top, I changed into my swimming gear and prepared to walk to my lane.

30 seconds for official top entering the water, 3 breathe-ups and I was on my way…feeling comfortable at 20m’s I surprised myself with already being in the end of the lane, but that didn’t influence the rest of the performance. At 100m’s turning point I was made up my mind that half-way the pool was a good point to come up.

Reminding myself not to perform some nice pulling keeping my hands close to the chest and throwing my arm on the ledge as soon as I surfaced. I get into all this background info, as this is a marker or me to know that I’m totally in control of the whole performance, which was a 112m (112,5m as I planned it in the middle of the pool ).

Yesterdays performance went really good, with a 50m warm-up I was ready to go and realize a personal best for me in a competition of 94m’s. They actually penalized me for pulling, but then again pulling and pushing off from the bottom are rules made for things you won’t gain a single bit extra to your performance.

I’m very pleased with my result and that’s what counts.

After a good night’s rest we’re getting ready for my OT’s in static at 9:45 and dynamic with fins at 14:51.

After that we’ll be having the dinner and after that we’ll drive home again…for monday, work, school and life continues

New job and some family stuff prohibited me to write anything serious for some time over here. Still very busy with a lot of things, so I decided to put some Shark.nu tasks in the closet and concentrate on the urgent and good stuff first.

With regards to Sharkbait the most important task for me is to be in the water myself and have fun! And this is going perfectly the last few months, so from now on I try to up the level a little bit and sometimes even hold my breath for an extreme period of 3 contractions instead of coming up after the first contraction I receive.

Coaching Sanne is still a lot of fun because we have some clear goals defined and we’re entering new territory every trainings session. The main goal we’re still working on is the mental part I wrote about earlier. As we ended the second phase project 13 end of December, I took all the data from the preceding 13 weeks and lay them out and found some interesting stuff to work on. Breaking mental barriers isn’t easy but we’re getting there!

This weekend it’s time for the 7th Coupe des Dauphin in Geneve, Switzerland, and we will drive over there with our crew to have some fun. That means Sanne is tapering down on the fitness and intense freediving specific exercises and focusing more on technique. Tomorrow is dynamic without fins training sessions again and at the same time the last pool training before the competition, so we take it easy. The body is ready, the mind is better then ever, so I’m pretty confident that Sanne will reach his set goals.

On Saturday evening he must do at least a dynamic without fins with a distance of 95 meters, which should be no problem. The fun part is that we decided that Sanne will never come closer then 5 meters from the end of the pool in training and competition. This to break the turning-mental-breakpoint. So if he decides to go further then 95 meters, he has to do at least 105! Hehe, funny me…

Next day is time for static, and as it’s been a long time since he has done serious static work, I don’t know what to expect. Furthermore we’re going to do an experiment during that official attempt, so I’m very curious what will happen. As you have to set goals, we set his static to 5:34 minutes. More about the experiment later.
After that it’s time for dynamic with fins and after last Friday’s training we decided to put the goal distance at 110 meters. Last Friday we went to the pool to find out that our training pool was being used as a warm up pool for the swimming competition that was going on in the Olympic pool. So the pool crew decided that all the people who came for their recreational swim could use only 1 lane instead of the normal 4. That was not exactly what we had planned for! So while everybody was preparing to jump in the water, Sanne grabbed his fins, jumped in the pool and started preparing.

While taking his last breaths, standing at the end of the pool, around 5 people jumped from the start block over him into the water. So with a total of 1 minute preparation during a very busy jump in, he started his dynamic with an end goal of reaching 105 meters (remember: he could not stop less then 5 meters from the end). Confident start and swim made a very easy 107 meter dynamic with fins which he recovered from within 2 breaths. Clearly there is much more in there, but let just put the goal for next week at 110 and be satisfied with a clear and conscience decision to do a certain distance that is in reach. Mental training, remember!

I guess the other freedivers, who were still preparing on the side of the pool, didn’t even notice that Sanne did this dive… fun stuff as usual!

All in all I look forward into going to Geneva and have some fun and see Sanne do what he does two times a week in our own pool.