154m dyn NR! Finally passed the 150m mark...

Finally I've made it, touching the wall at 150m and turn... I did do a 150m in Nordic Deep this summer, but forgot my noseclip and therefor still no long dive in the ranking...

I'm also quite happy that I managed to perform well in the freezing water of the egyptian pool (not heated...). My legs got completely numb and lactic in the end, so I used my arms to move forward, but as long as my head is clear at surfacing everything is ok.

This was my first world championship and therefor it was quite a surprice to me when nobody but Natalia Molchanova beat me in this diciplin! I was 2. on the dyn result list for the women... How amazing it is to actually feel like I belong here, along with the other big names. I still feel small, but also proud of what I'm capable of doing. Guess I'll keep training!

6'15 in STA, 3. best among the women!

My official top was quite early in the morning, so I skipped breakfast and did some yoga before getting my suit on. Carol was coaching me, like on my training dives, and she realized already during my warm up that things were working very good today. I did two warm ups, one with 30 sec of contractions and one with 60 sec. The last dive took more than 4 min, which means I got my contractions after 3! This is about 30 sec better than usual, and it was the same on the big dive as well...

Some statics are completely filled with thoughts, like "how long has it been now?" or "will I be able to do this for another 3 min?". This is not nice and you're fighting through most of the dive. But on some rare occasions, you manage to drift away. Really far away, not noticing the fact that you're holding your breath in a swimming pool with lot's of people watching. This time it happened for me, and my mind took me on a trip, to Dahab, to the blue hole, to nice and calm places.

When the fighting started, I let it happen. I had contractions, no doubt, but I was able to manage them and most importantly manage my focus and motivation. Alot of this is thanks to wonderful Carol, which kept telling me "you are so strong, you can do this" I believed her! In the end, I started noticing those small signs that tell you to be carefull, and I came up with a clean SP and got the white card. I hadn't really caught the times that Carol had been telling me and got a HUGE surprise when she told me I had passed 6 min, doing 6'15! (To put this number in perspective: the pb before this one was 5.50, and done just a few days ago. And before that again, I had done 5.30... So it was a jump of 45 sec!!!).

The rest of the day I was walking around with a big smile, which grew even bigger when the day was over and I had done the 3. longest static among the women...

55m CWT new national record!

I had a wonderful dive to the depth of 55m, which is both a personal best and a national record. My legs worked fine, the mouthfill didn't run out untill the moment I hit the bottom plate and I did a clean, strong SP. All in all I'm very very happy:)

Team UN

I was very fortunate to get invited by Martin Stepanek to join some other freedivers for depth training before the world championship in Hurghada. We were people from all around the world, Japan, Canada, USA, Czech Republic, Brasil,
New Zealand and Norway, and there was a really family feeling to it.

Thanks to Honsa and rest of the crew at Lighthouse Divecenter, as well as the Sahara Hotel, we had wonderful training facilities. The usual day started very early with a light breakfast, followed by some yoga and stretching before we packed the gear and headed out with the boat.

The weather was varied with both nice days and some choppy sea. We also had one day being shipwrecked even before training, but that's a whole story...

The pools of the hotel wasn't heated and therefor very cold (december isn't that hot, even in Egypt...). Static in the ocean was a new challenge, but kind of nice:)



I would love to go back to more of this kind of events, as you learn so incredibly much from training side by side with some of the worlds best freedivers. Thank you guys!

1. place! MAN Cup, Hungary, 13.-14. october

I love this sport! Not only do you meet alot of funny, friendly people, you also have a good excuse to travel around and see different places. This time freediving took me to Hungary, first Budapest and then Hajdjoslobozlói (please don't blame me if I spelled it wrong!), where the competition took place.

It was really nice meeting up with our team from Nordic Deep, Eva, Kars and Daan. The danish had also got a new mermaid, Maria, and they were starting the training for the worlds...

I was not in the best shape, still had a problems with my eardrum and a cold. Still I managed a new NR with 85m in DNF, a very hard 5'03 in STA and and even harder 129m in DYN. But the fighting payed off as I collected the most points overall and won the competition!

And then I was going back home again, with some new experiences and new memories. Already looking forward to the next one...

Part 1: Nordic Deep 16.-20. August 2006

I was driving down to Lysekil on Monday 14. August, all the way from Gjøvik. The driving itself was okey, but I must admit I had some problems finding the big white house called Lysestrand. It took me several trips up and down and around, maybe doe to few directions from a very busy Sebastian and my own orientation knowledge, but I finally made it.



More people arrived the next day and the fun started. Weather was nice, the fjord and the ocean were just beautiful and we had a good training, checking weights and testing the strength in cnf.



Wednesday was the first day of the competition, and like the following days it started with a yoga session in the morning. I was competing in constant weight without fins for the first time and had announced 25m, which went fine. I got a white card and a new national record:)



Sebastian’s mother, Mia, had come to cook healthy vegetarian food for us freedivers, both breakfast and dinner. It was just fantastic to come back from long day of competing and diving to a warm, delicious meal. Big thanks to Mia! And of course another thanks to Sebastian and his little helpers (Hanli, Annelie, Rahel, Emil and several others) for making competing being smooth and fun.

5th German Championship, Hemmoor, Germany, 28.-30. July 2006

With the help of some new contacts and friends from Aarhus, I found my way to the first deep competition in the wonderful waters of Hemmoor. I met up with Eva again, who was a fellow beginner in Aarhus and we also run into some strange dutch/russian guys, Daan, Kars and Igor, which happened to dish up some nice food over the weekend.

I had spent two weeks in Dahab, Egypt, just beforehand, training constant weight with Lotta and Linda at Freedive Dahab. There I had gone from 25m to 45m in depth, a huge jump for me! But the dark, cold European water frightened me a little, and it took a lot of pep talk from Daan to convince me to announce 40m for the competition. But when the day came, I did my dive, coming up with a tag and a big smile :)

The dynamic discipline was taking place in the lake, going straight ahead and following a rope, which was a new experience for most people. I went into the water in only my swimming suit, as cold water is famous to help increase the dive reflex. Breathing up therefore included some shivering, but once I started swimming, it was rather okey. After loosing track of the tennis ball which marked the different distances, I thought I’d better get up. I ended up at 127m, which was the longest distance among the women.

The last thing on the program on Sunday was static. Eva and I had arranged our announced times so we could coach each other. She went first and made a very nice dive past 5 minutes. Then I started preparing for my own dive, doing some very nice warm-ups and feeling good. But when the count down started, I realised I had been in the water for too long already, and I was starting to shiver. I started the dive, trying to relax the muscles, but it was impossible. When I came up at 4.13, I was a little on the edge even though I wasn’t close to my PB at all. My body had simply spent too much oxygen trying to keep warm, so that was a mistake and lesson to learn from.

I ended up on second place overall and a national record, which I was very happy with.

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!