A fish tank in Mjøsa

What do you do if you are a tv reporter planning to intervju a freediver? You would want to get some cool video, but what if you don't have an underwater camera and camera man (also called Diver)... Well, then you go to the closest Pet Shop and ask to borrow a huge aquarium.

This was actually the case when the local tv station wanted to make a report about me 26.july -06, shot in the local lake of Mjøsa.

So they had me talking, putting on my gear and swim around a little for the camera. But what don't you do for the sport, right? Was fun with the aquarium though :)

Easter in Dahab

Luckily I had enough money from working to take off for a week of freediving in my Easter holiday. At a later point, I hope to make myself write about my trips more thoroughly, but there's no chance I will get to do that now. Even so, I will post a few lines and pictures from last year in near future.

Back to Easter! I had got my (not so cheap) flight ticket in good time and for some reason I was lucky enough to have my holiday corresponding with a small competition held by Freedive Dahab. I had planned to dive with Lotta and Linda anyway (after all, I got to stay in Linda's guest room...), so this was just a great opportunity to get more competition experience.

Quite a lot of people happened to be in Dahab this period, both for training and for the competition. This included Thomas Grindevoll, my only fellow competing Norwegian freediver, Karen, his saving angel of a girlfriend who helped out together with Pia (another sweet girl), my not-that-sweet-although-dear friend Daan from the Netherlands and my new friends from Mad Cup, the swiss guys: Joakim and Cédric. There was also some Italian guys competing and Swedish Rolf presently living in Sharm which I was diving with last summer(!).

Oh and NOT to forget the sweet sweet monofin goddess Natalia Avseenko and friendly Patrick who was the our guides to an unforgettable dive-through of the Canyon (please check out Peter P's video on youtube to get an idea of what I'm talking about, you find it among the links).

Of course there were all of the Dahab natives present, Annelie, Sebastian (not really native, but close enough), Emil, Andy, Sara, Ali, Mahmood, Noseclip and Frenzel, all the camels and the goats...

Arriving on Sunday, I had my first training the next day. One day was not really enough to get used to depth again before the competition, which was Tuesday and Wednesday. My body and especially the ears were not really cooperating with my mind the two first days, but on the wednesday, I made a nice and easy dive to 45m and got a white card. Then on friday I finally did some more depth, hitting 51m twice. I was really happy about these dives as almost everything was working fine, counting the kick cycles, gliding, equalisation (even though my mouthfill is still running out at 50...) and I felt strong.

For the second session Friday, we dived the Canyon. I simply have no words for it other that it was the most amazing dive I've done so far and I will keep the memories in my heart.

What to do when html codes is greek and the wallet is sleek?

Then you get your butt going and start a blog. Just hope I figure out how to upload some pictures here... oh, and how about video? ah, well there's always a nice little button called "HELP"!

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!