A little reflection on a great time

Well, what can I say? So many things can go wrong or turn out some other way than planned, which I’ve had on a few occasions before. I’ve had my eardrum perforated, have been running out of training time or being stuck at a certain depth. But this time the Blue Hole was on my side and gave me a wonderful time freediving.


Not only did I reach a mark (the 60 meters) that I’ve been wanting for a while, I also found the real joy in being down there. These dives during both the training and competition has left me with a lot of confidence and renewed my motivation again. I’m very grateful that I had the opportunity to have these two weeks in such a wonderful place with a lot of great people. I’ll do my best to keep this “feel good” feeling and use it for the next months of studying until I once again can go deep diving…

Also thanks for all nice comments, e-mails and general friendly support! And a big hug to all the guys from Bizzy Blue Hole, hope to see you folks again soon :)

The last day: 61m CWT NR!

Yesterday my stomach was giving me some troubles and I didn’t do much climbing. Luckily, today I was feeling almost 100% again, only a little tired. That didn’t keep me from having another wonderful dive, breaking the 60m mark with a new pb and record to 61m! It really feels like I’ve broken down some barriers in my deep diving now, and I’m really really happy :-)

The dive went as planned, with the usual number of kicks down to about 33m, getting the mouth fill ok and then just falling, falling, falling. I’m so much more relaxed in the sink faze now, and the discomfort and stress I used to have at the bottom is nearly gone. Two meters ahead of the turn I must have done something strange and lost part of the air in my mouth, but still could equalize enough to get to the bottom plate and grab a tag.

The way up again it was going through my mind: “You did it! Now just get to the surface and you’ve done all you wanted to do.” It was a great feeling, and after a strong surface protocol I was going “JIIHAA!” These three dives, 57m, 55m and 61m, gave me the first place in total points. We even finished off the day with going horse riding on the beach, so that’s close to a perfect day…

55m Free Immersion, a 10m increase!

Last time I did free immersion was actually Nordic Deep 2006, where I did a 45m dive and national record. As I've developed alot in depth since then, I was ready to push the record a bit further and announced 55m.

It turned out to be another calm and enjoyable dive, though my arms are not as strong as I'd like them to be and the total 110m up and down took me close to 3 minutes to complete(!). I was strong and clear, and got my white card :) It was nice to know that I can make such a long dive and come up fine. It means I have capasity for some long and deep dives in the future.

I'm really happy with the last two days and my new pb's. Tomorrow we have a day out of the water and we'll go climbing in the desert instead. Freedivers going high! And on friday is the last competition day with all the final excitement as I'm positioned first among the women so far...

New Norwegian record: CWT 57m!

Today was one of those great days where people came up getting one white card after the other. The ocean was flat, no waves at all and the air was hot. At the last training session I reached 55m with air still left in my mouthfill, so I figured I could try to add a couple of meters to my pb and nr.

The dive started well. I lost track of my kick cycles a little bit, making me slower, but I got going better around 20m. When I reached the falling face, I managed to relax completely and only focus on the equalization and the mouthfill. Suddenly the bottom plate was already there, I grabbed a tag and kicked off upwards.

I was feeling very strong and good on the decent too, and the surface protocol was perfectly clean. Then I realized “wow, this was easy! I can do this stuff.” That is such a nice feeling and a boost for the confidence. Yes, I will go deeper and explore my capacity, and I will enjoy it along the way.

Bizzy with training

For once the bits and pieces seems to fall into place and I'm getting deeper and more comfortable every day. Yesterday I was out diving with Alex from Lituania, Weine, Klara and Ingela, as Martin was sick. Today he was better luckily, and we had a really good day at Blue Hole.


We started off with a training session, where I did a couple of frc-dives (breathing out before diving) to prepare for a deep dive. Then I breathed up, Klara did my count down and off I went. The equalisation went well, I had air left in the mouthfill and felt good. But at 50m the rope was completely hooked up on the wall of the Blue Hole, and I had to turn around...

After a little rest and helping out the other divers at the bouy, I made another try to go deeper. I reached 55m, still comfortable and with air left, and came up again very strong. This is equal to my pb, so I was very satisfied. I'll take a break off tomorrow and then it's Tuesday and first competition day!

Bizzy Blue Hole: tuning in

I'm finally back in Dahab, Egypt, for training some deep freediving and attending a competition during the event Bizzy Blue Hole. Dahab is a center for freediving, but these days it's especially busy ere, more than 40 freediver will be in town for the event! Martin and I arrived on Tuesday, and by now we've got into "Dahab mode", which means freediving and more freediving...

Our days here start with an early hour of yoga to prepare the body for the training, then a little breakfast and packing the bags to go out to Blue Hole. I've had some good trainings on Wednesday (30m), Thursday (40m) and today (41m), slowly adapting my body to the pressure and the physical work of diving deep. Today we also had a 4 hour long yoga workshop with world recordholer and yoga teacher Sara Campbell which gave a lot of inspiration!

Dahab is full of camels, goats, beduin kids selling bracelets, good atmosphere and genuine egyptian life. Everything goes a bit slower than in Europe and you can let your shoulders drop down. And when you add great blue water, a 90m deep training spot and beautiful fish, what more can you want?

More pictures, updates about trainings and competition are soon to come :)

Living off a suitcase (diving bag)

Sometimes I feel like I don't get my bags unpacked before I'm going off again, which is great when it means travelling to nice places. Here I've just spent a week with Martin in Berlin. Picture is taken from Ostbahnhof waiting for the "direct" train going to Århus (due to some work on the lines, it still took me 8 hours to get home....). Now I will be in Denmark untill Monday, when I'm taking the train back to Berlin, and on Tuesday we'll be flying to Egypt!!!