Monday 12 June 2006

Aarhus Triple Challenge, Denmark, 9.-11. June 2006

I was invited and convinced to join my first competition by Stig after a successful course in Gothenburg (date). It turned out to be the thing that really got me hooked on the competitive part of freediving. It was also a very pleasant way of getting started. The competition was relaxed, the people very friendly and I even got some decent results without falling into too many beginners traps.

This first day I did dynamic without fins, and surprised myself with a new PB after swimming 75m.

On Saturday we had both static and dynamic with fins, and both of them went okey, but not as good as I had hoped for. In static I came up after 4 minutes, having a little problem motivating myself. The same thing happened for dynamic as well, where I surfaced at 100m, 14m short of my PB.

Then came the last day and the last chances to kick ass, and this must have worked for me. With some help from coach Peter, I managed 4:36 in static after getting my contractions at 1:30…

At the course in Gothenburg, I had got the chance to try out some techniques inspired by Sebastian Murat. Since I didn’t have so much competition, I thought I’d might as well try the same thing here. So I slipped into the water just before OT, took deep breath and then laid face down in the water. I waited for about 40 seconds for the first little urge to breath and then started swimming. This meant that I got my contractions after 25m, lots of lactic acid building up in my legs, but enough oxygen for the brain to be perfectly clear at the end of the dive. I did 133m with my plastic bifins and I was very happy!

As I am the only Norwegian girl who’s ever competed in an official AIDA competition, any competition bests I make is a national record. Even so, it felt good to end up with 5 national records after my first competition!