morning gruel: pearl diver in training

pearl diver in training

I was freediving in the ocean this weekend to prepare for the national competition in a couple of weeks.

It was a great day for diving. The sun was out, the water was calm, and I was with a great group of people. I planned a dive to 26 meters (about 85 feet), which if successful would be my deepest dive ever. My deepest before now had been 25 meters so 26 wasn't much of a stretch. My warm-up dives were easy. I was in a great mental and physical condition to do the dive. I rested on the surface of the ocean and listened to my trainer countdown. Finally I took one very deep breath and dove.

It was an easy dive. When I hit the 26 meter mark I felt that I could easily go further. I swam back up and got to the surface safely. I was thrilled with my accomplishment and I felt great... except for the fact that I couldn't really catch my breath. I felt congested. You see, one thing that happens when you dive deep is your lungs fill with fluid in order to compensate for the extreme pressure your body is under. This is part of the natural human response to being underwater. Usually the fluid is reabsorbed into your body after a few minutes and the congested feeling goes away.

But the feeling didn't go away as quickly as it should have. The thing is, I had incurred a slight injury to my lungs. It was my own fault, as I had made a slight mistake on my technique during descent. It's too complex and too uninteresting to non-divers for me to explain it all here. But the result of the injury is that I am now out of the ocean for a couple of weeks and out of deep diving for several weeks. What that means is no deep diving at the nationals, which will probably keep me from placing in the top three. But I can still do my best in the pool events and I know I'm going to have a great time.

Posted at 12:17 AM in Freediving, General Gruel | Permalink