The hardest part of the training

is sometimes to simply get to the swimming pool. These days it should be very simple as I live 5min walk away from it, but it still takes will power. Coming home from school, making food, doing homework and then running off to training feels exhausting sometimes. The thing to keep in mind though, is that once I slip into the water and get the monofin back on, everything is alright. It's cold and calm, and both your pulse and your shoulders drops... It's peace.

I had a very nice training monday, together with Sanne, Lars, Kurt and many more from Aarhus freediving club. I was doing some laps of regular swimming, then training the abs and back muscles with speedy dolphin kicks both uw and on the back at the surface. I also focus alot on the technic on my trainings, as this is a very important part in swimming efficiently with the monofin. And the more you do it, the better it gets!

I also started my training for the 16x50m at the Long night of apnea in Berlin in november. This is real training, high efficiency and alot of lactic acid! I'm not really a fast swimmer, so I'll have a lot to work on there. It's also crucial to have some tough muscles that can last 20-25 min with very little oxygen... I was starting off easy, didn't time the breaks etc, but even so my legs were quite stiff the next day. Wish me luck!

PS: Yes, will also need to practice my buble rings :)

The first tango in Århus

Last night I went to my first milongo in Århus since moving down, and it turned out to be a great night. I came one hour early to join the intro salon first, where alot of other new people also showed up and we where welcomed and tried out some of the beginners steps. Then the real milonga started, where you dance with alot of different people and really have fun. After having spent almost four hours on the dance floor, I simply had to go home and try to make my feet recover. Because on sunday there's a big tango happening, within the festival Aarhus Festuge, which I'll have to take a look at...

Moving from a small town to a bigger one has some advantages. One of them is that there are milongas (dance nights) here every other friday, and courses and training evenings. In Norway I had to travel to either Lillehammer or Oslo do dance argeninte tango...

Of course the scene isn't as big as the one in Berlin, where I've been dancing several times, but hopefully I'll get to dance more regularly now and learn more.

First day at Uni!

Waking up early again after a long summer break wasn't really pleasant, but I survived with the help of some hot coffee. I'd already had some problems getting around to the right places in Århus as I don't really know the town yet, but now I had a big university campus to cope with too! And the worst part is not the high amout of different buildings, but that they all look the same with their yellow brick stones and green surroundings.

It was a long day with welcome speeches, campus tour, buying books and learning the names of my fellow class mates. There's certainly a different feeling to this, but I really like the fact that I'm finally a student. And I must admit I even look forward to the first lectures after looking through one of the books I bought about human physiology. It's interesting! And for those of you who don't know (or don't remember the difficult name), I'm studying Molecular medicin.

Life in Århus

Breakfast can be tricky without a sufficiant number of seats. Cardboard boxes may work, or they may make you fall over a few times...

Anyway, the coffee tastes extra good in a new home and you don't mind having towel curtains for the first week or so.

With some good help from Martin, I also got to put up a lamp. Total costs: 85 DKK, inclueding light bulb. Thank God for Ikea!

1. place Nordic Deep -07!

This years biggest freediving event in Scandinavia (and maybe even Europe?) is over now, and I'm already looking forward to next time. Organizer Sebastian was working hard along with his crew, and with a little help from the athletes as well, it really worked well:) At least I had a lot of fun, a good time and some nice diving.

After some bad training days where most things felt wrong for me and two competitiondays without much to speak of, I had one wonderful day Saturday where everything fell into place. In the morning I made a very easy and comfortable CWT dive to 54m. I really felt good, even at the bottom place getting the tag!

Then in the evening I competed in both DYN and STA since I wanted to collect some more points for the overall ranking. Swimming side by side with Eva, my competition instincts kicked in a little and I made myself keep swimming. After 150m I came up feeling very strong and happy, but didn't take it all out because of the next day.

Even the static worked better this day and after the dynamic, I jumped in my suit again and did 5:08 (without my usual warm up).

Sunday was the very last competition day and my last attempt of a deep dive. After the succesful dive yesterday, I had annouced a new PB with 57m. The weather was nice and the ocean flat, but my body was tired after the long week. I also had a bad tension and some pain in my shoulder and neck, so didn't have much fun getting ready. I went down, but at about 45m depth, I had some "no good" feelings and the urge to turn. Which I did at 50m. The dive was clean, yellow card for those 7m, but I was happy enough:)

In the end I realized I had actually gathered all my points during only one day! And it was enough to give me the 1.place among the women, just like last year. I'm very satisfyed with that result and also happy with my cool diploma (no, it's not a cow fish, it's an orca...).


Results are finally up: http://www.fridykning.se/nordicdeep/gaseresults07.html

And a report: http://www.fridykning.se/nordicdeep/gasereport07.html

Training weekend in Hemmoor 3.-5. august

It was just wonderful to be able to take my wetsuit and monofin and travel to the lake in Hemmoor, Germany, for some training towards Nordic Deep. We dipped in the water already friday night, and twice on saturday and sunday.

Here's Johannes, me and Martin after a nice session.

The lake is simply a playground, with a sailboat, truck, plane and underwater forest. The water has a beautiful green blueish color and the visibility is very good.

There is also a dive platform with lines and counterballast system, everything you need to do a real training. I had a few nice dives around 40-46m, but I did feel it had been a while since last time I did deep diving (easter...).

The weather was great with sun and blue sky, and we made a wonderful barbeque after all the diving.

Moving in

The big trip to the flat land of Denmark went from Gjøvik to Larvik by car, then the ferry over to Hirtshals and finally arriving in Århus around noon 2.august.

I must admit I did not manage to pack light this time either, so we had the car all filled up and the hanger too (is that the right word?).



Unfortunatly, my wonderful new bed was just an inch too big to fit into the elevator, and my dad and I had to carry it up to fifth floor... Well, some more strair exercise?

After some cleaning, it was time for the thing I had been looking forward the most: getting the furniture up and all my stuff to it's place! Stick around for the "finished!" pictures.