morning gruel

the cesspool

Some of you very sharp readers might have noticed that I didn't post on Monday. That's because I was sick. The thing is, I never get sick. If I feel something coming on, it's usually gone within a couple of hours. I feel fortunate that I have such a healthy constitution.

But for those of you who read yesterday's entry regarding my freediving competition, you probably know that I inhaled a good lungful of nasty outdoor pool water.

I suspect that we were the first ones to use the outdoor pool this year. This leads me to believe that they haven't cleaned it since last fall. I mean, the pool was pretty gross. The water was full of floaties and the slimy bottom was covered in all kinds of crap -- there was a sock, leaves of course, a dead bird, lots of general junk and a bunch of bird shit. Not just regular bird shit mind you, but good sized goose and seagull crap. I was swimming in a petri dish. So when I couldn't keep my head out of the water at the end of my dive, I inhaled a nice big dose of the bacteria-laden cesspool. Most of it went into my lungs but I managed to swallow some of it too.

I had an immediate sore throat. By Monday I could barely swallow and my muscles were aching. I was thinking that maybe the bird shit gave me bird flu. But being as resilient as I am, by Tuesday morning I was already feeling about 92% well. Today I'm at 98%.

I guess it was that 24 hour bird flu.

the results are in!

I had a great time at my freediving competition this past weekend.

Saturday was the static event. Static is essentially holding your breath underwater. The last competition I won the event with a time of 5:31. I managed six minutes easily in training last week so I thought I'd go for it in competition. Well, I came up at 6:02 and had a blackout (not uncommon in this sport). I recovered very quickly and at first I didn't even realize that I had blacked out at all. But that's only because the safety person had held my head out of the water so I didn't drown. So I was disqualified. I could have come up sooner and I still would have done very well in the competition, but for me the competitions are more about exploring my personal limits than winning. Anyway, I had a poor warm-up and didn't really feel prepared to do my personal best but I didn't pay attention to my own body and went for it anyway. My body was saying you can't do six minutes today but my brain wasn't listening, it just wanted that six minutes! So in the end, the disqualification didn't surprise me.

How do black-outs occur in this sport? Here's the simple explanation: while you're underwater, the oxygen level in your blood keeps dropping. When your head comes out of the water at the end of the dive, all of the blood that was in your brain gets sucked away from it by gravity. Then you take that first breath and it still takes a moment for that new oxygen to get to your brain. If the oxygen doesn't get to your brain fast enough, you faint. It's kind of like getting a headrush if you stand up really fast after being on the couch for an entire afternoon. Black-outs donn't happen all of the time, only if (like me) you take yourself a little farther than your body wants to go.

Sunday was the dynamic with fins event. Dynamic consists of doing laps underwater. I listened to myself (the part of me that was saying you're not ready for what you want to do today) and decided I would come up just after the 75m mark, which is something that's very doable for me. I've done 75m many, many times and have always been successful. I had learned from the day before and decided that I wasn't prepared to push myself to the limit.

BUT we were in the outdoor pool at UBC which has almost no distance markers on the bottom. What I had figured was around 75-76m was actually 78m. So I went a little further than I had thought I should go. I came up at 80m but when I exhaled, I sank down and inhaled a bunch of water before my safety diver could grab my head (again!). So another disqualification. My form throughout the swim was very good and well paced, so I was a bit disappointed to be disqualified.

my competition results:
final points: 0 
place: last

But like I said, I'm not too interested in winning. I'm much more interested in discovering my own potential. I learned a lot from my errors and how to perform better next time. Plus I had such a great time! The best part of the weekend was watching Jill Yoneda set a new Canadian womens' dynamic with fins record of 137m. She beat her own record of 133m which she set last year.

Next month I begin a 12 week course with Performance Freediving. I'm looking forward to tracking my development over three months. I can't wait!

Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you what happens when you inhale a lungful of dirty outdoor pool water.

voluntary brain damage

I have a freediving competition this weekend.

One of the things that people often ask me about freediving is, if you hold your breath for that long, don't you get brain damage? My answer of course has always been no. The thing is, lately I've noticed something a tad disturbing during training. You see, I keep a log of all of my training activities: what works and what doesn't, breath hold times, distance covered, physical sensations... and I record all of this information so that I have a comprehensive overview of my training and development.

What does that have to do with brain damage, you might ask? Well, I like to make my log entries immediately after training, while every physical and psychological sensation is still fresh in my mind. So say I do a sequence of long breath holds. I then grab my computer, which is on hand because I use it as a training aid, and start typing. Now, I am a very good typist. I'm fast and my spelling is perfect, with the exception of the words necessary and unnecessary. The thing is, my typing after holding my breath is awful. It's full of typos. My fingers fumble around on the keys and words tumble out completely wrong. The effect of the breath hold on my typing doesn't linger very long but I can't deny that it's there. Which leads me to ask the question:

Am I willingly submitting myself to recurring brain damage?

Well, the answer is still no...I think. There have been very thorough scientific studies done on freediving and the long-term effects it has on the brain. The results are inconclusive. Generally speaking, I'd say that's a good sign. But maybe what the scientists are really saying is, if you are getting brain damaged we can't tell because we think there's something wrong with you for trying to hold your breath for that long in the first place. But I love freediving and I will keep doing it until the typos start to pop up when I'm not training.

I'm looking forward to the competition this weekend, where I'll be attempting a six minute breath hold.

Wush me lick.

nothing like a science fair

This weekend I participated in the Canadian Western Regional Freediving Competition. This was my first competition EVER.

It began on Friday evening with the Static Apnea event. For those that don't know, Static Apnea is essentially holding your breath underwater. This is most often performed while floating on the surface (although this weekend Wes Lapp made his attempt on the bottom of the shallow end with a weightbelt across his chest to hold him down!). I have a warm-up for this event that I am quite comfortable with and on this day it went well and I felt great going in. I am extremely comfortable holding my breath and really enjoy the challenge, so this was the event I expected to excel in...and I did. I excelled myself all the way to 6 minutes and 10 seconds, lifted my head out of the water in a desperate attempt to breathe, and promptly blacked-out with quite impressive full body tremors. During this black-out I went to the mall. There were wonderful people there, all being very nice to me. Imagine my surprise when I woke up and found that I wasn't at the mall at all, but floating on my back in the pool, surrounded by safety people gently urging me to breathe. Now, 6:10 is a pretty good time for Static (the current Canadian record is 7:22), but it doesn't really count if you black-out. There is also very specific surface protocol that must be followed in order for a performance to be judged as valid. This involves, in order, removing your mask or goggles and noseclip, giving the OK sign, and saying "I'm okay" or "I am okay." If this doesn't happen in the specific order given within 15 seconds after surfacing, a competitor will be disqualified due to a surface protocol violation. I, however, was disqualified due to black-out.

What did I learn from my black-out? LOTS! I know now what it feels like when I am about to black-out. This is very important knowledge to have. What else did I learn? Always have an exit strategy.  My plan was to hold my breath until I couldn't hold it any longer and then come up.  This, as I learned, is a bad strategy.  I was able to make a second attempt on Sunday for which I had developed a solid plan. When I received the 4:45 signal, I would slowly put my hands on deck and bring my feet to the floor. This would take about 15 seconds. This movement would keep my mind alert and I would have the opportunity after the 5 minute signal to evaluate how I was feeling. My plan was to lift my head out ABSOLUTELY NO LATER THAN 5:45 no matter how great I felt. I followed the plan exactly. At the 5:30 signal I felt the first sluggish-brain precursor to a black-out. I lifted my head slowly out of the water and performed my surface protocol perfectly for the judge, Tom Lightfoot. Official time: 5:31. My final ranking in Static Apnea: 1st Place! By the way, I couldn't help but notice that the safety person assigned for my second Static attempt was Brent Pascall, the biggest and strongest guy around, who would have no problem keeping my head out of the water should I black-out again!

The other event at the competition was Dynamic Apnea. In this discipline, a competitor swims for distance underwater on a single breath. After learning how important a plan is, I formulated one for this event. I performed exactly according to my plan, popping out of the water just after my third length. Official distance: 76 meters. My final ranking in Dynamic Apnea: 7th. Now, seventh place doesn't sound like much, but I am very proud that I followed my plan exactly and had a personal best performance!

So that's how my first freediving competition went. My first place finish in Static put me in second place for the entire competition! Not bad for my first time. I can't wait for the next competition in February 2008! And oh yeah, I got to take home a gold medal for my Static performance. This is the first medal I've ever received that wasn't for a science fair, and my FIRST GOLD MEDAL EVER! I had a great time and met some wonderful people. EVERYONE by the way, was incredibly friendly and supportive and I'm looking forward to seeing them all again soon.

Thanks to everyone at CAFA, Performance Freediving, and the Vancouver Apneist Club.

And special thanks to the lovely and multi-talented Morgaine, who photographed the entire competition and was also my warm-up safety for my first place Static performance. I'm sure she'll be posting photos of the competition on her blog very soon.

learning to breathe

This week I became a freediver.

When I was a kid, we had a pool. All summer long, I was the first one in and the last one out. I didn’t hang out by the pool to get a tan. I spent my time in the water because it was the best place that I could imagine being. I did not like surface swimming. I thought it was the most boring thing a person could do, so I spent my days underwater. I would do laps on the bottom of the pool, fetch objects and simply hang out in the deep end to see how long I could hold my breath. One of my favorite things to do was let out all of my air so that I would sink to the bottom where I would sit and enjoy the silence, looking to the surface, knowing that in a moment I would have to go back up.

I forgot about the pool. I moved to Vancouver and focused on other things; acting, university, relationship. One day I was watching the news and I saw Mandy-Rae Cruickshank freediving in Horseshoe Bay, just outside of the city. I watched her take a single breath and swim down to some unbelievable depth and come back up on her own power. It was dark, where she had gone. Unlike the pool I grew up in, where I was surrounded by blue vinyl walls and was never more than eight feet from the surface, the ocean was dark and kinda scary. And so I thought, maybe I could hold my breath and try that, but it’s too dark and cold and unknown for me to even try. It didn’t look like fun. I forgot about freediving.

Then last year one of the most amazing things in my life occurred. For my birthday, Morgaine gave me scuba diving lessons. She knew I loved the water but had been ignoring it for years. We started our scuba lessons in the pool, and I felt happy and comfortable and simply thrilled to be underwater and be breathing. By the time we got to the ocean, I felt completely safe and excited to be going down into the mysterious darkness. And there we saw the most wonderful things; sea cucumbers, feather stars, giant lingcod, crabs, a mud shark… Those first few dives in the ocean changed me in ways I can never explain. And I was no longer afraid of the dark mystery of the ocean.

Because of all of the time I spent in the pool, I’ve always been able to hold my breath quite easily. I could go two minutes without any effort, which never really seemed like a particularly useful skill. Then one day Morgaine brought up freediving. She saw that my absolute comfort in the water, my excitement over what lay below and my ability to hold my breath all pointed to this incredible sport. My attachment to the water suddenly seemed to have direction. And so I signed up for a four day clinic with Performance Freediving.

This week I spent four days learning the necessary skills to enable me to hold my breath and swim down to depth. We started our ocean dives by pulling ourselves down a rope and pulling back up. In this way we could ease ourselves into the exceptionally clear ocean and grow accustomed to the new sensations of pressure on our bodies and lungs. There is a kind of stillness down there that I have never experienced before. Even with all of the physical and mental struggle of getting the technique right, I felt completely safe and at ease. If I could have stayed down longer or gone down deeper I would have, but one breath can only be held for so long. By the end of the four days, I was able to swim down to 25 meters (82 feet) on a single lungful of air. The pressure at that depth squeezed my chest and left me with lungs so small that I would be unable to get enough air to equalize my ears if I went any deeper. I know that with practice I will go deeper, where it’s darker and quieter. And when I get there I will look up it won’t be like the pool; I will no longer be able to see the surface, but I will not be scared because I will know it is there when I need to take another breath.

Thanks to Kirk, Tom, Mandy-Rae, and everyone else at Performance Freediving.

And a huge thank you to Morgaine for your incredible love, support and encouragement. Thank you doesn't even begin to cover it.