Been a Long Time

It's been over a year since I last Blogged. I took a whole year out after competing in March 2012. My last training session was in Oct 2012 and I spent 2013 chasing my dream on completing my first Ironman. Gladly I report that I did it and really enjoyed the experience (except the run) I've never been a natural runner and always knew it would half kill me! It nearly did!

I decided that I'd start playing around in the water this year so I started training a couple of weeks ago. Playing around with a few tables and just getting comfortable with holding my breath again. I tried a max hold during the first week to establish my base level which ended up an abysmal 3mins 10secs!! Oh dear! Lots of work to do but no pressure on big numbers just yet.

It's nice to be back! 

Back into the Green

Had a great weekend back at Chepstow with the Salt-Free gang. All new faces to me but a nice bunch. I stayed for the two days and didn't set myself any targets, its been a loooong time since i done any depth work so getting wet was the order of the day. I worked my way through the three lines in three dives 15mtrs, 20mtrs and 30mtrs on day one, equalisation was easy and i felt no stress at all. Day two 35mtrs came fairly easy too and i spent the rest of the day having some great fun and chasing some monster trout.

Pool training last week went okay, i tried a single max hold with no warm up and managed 4mins fairly easy, i was hoping for a little more but ill carry on with the tables, mixed, Co2 and o2 over the next week and see how the next three weeks pan out in terms of progress.

Here We Go Again....

The freediving has been on hold since my last competition in March this year. I've now completed 7 triathlons. Had a great time competing this year and dropped loads of time from my previous year on the same triathlon courses. Most of the time was saved during the ride so all the cycle training certainly paid off!

So what's next? The UK National Freediving Comp dates for next year have now been published so this gives me a very nice 6mths to get my freediving back up to standard. I've had a great deal of neck & back injury's this year, not sure why? I have recently changed the mattress on my bed so hopefully this will help me and even more recently got myself back into the gym to strengthen the muscles and make myself more resilient to injury. I have also just found a great yoga class and i have booked myself in for my second session this week, I'm determined to keep at it this year!!

This week has been my first proper week of tables, i have mainly done mixed tables which start of nice and easy and more based on o2 tables where as at the end they are based on Co2 but have a higher apnea time than a standard Co2 table. Confused? Yeah me too!

I tried out my first static breath hold in the pool last Friday as a guide to find out where i was in terms of performance, 3min 30sec was all i could manage, i wasn't too discouraged by this as i haven't done any freedive training since March. Today i tried again (dry) and managed a very easy 4mins hold straight after 28mins of doing mixed tables, which felt fine.

Well, onwards and upwards....

One More Pic...Thanks to Daan Verhoeven

Great Northern Pics....

Great Northern Comp

Last weekend was the Great Northern Comp which is the UK's finest pool competition run by our very own Mr Steve Millard from Apneists UK. The comp has grown from strength to strength over the past three years and gains interest from the very finest freedivers in the UK. Nation records are always broken in every comp which really shows how talented the athletes are now in the UK. So how did i fair amongst these fine athletes, pretty well as a matter of fact. It was my highest scoring competition so far and i saw three, yes three white cards which is a real rarity for me. I think i was more relaxed going into the comp and trained slightly differently than usual i.e not panicking about my performances and ensuring i was peaking at the right time during training. I entered dynamic no fins on day one and completed a very nice 102mtrs which was a new PB for me. I came up clean and clear showing i could of gone much further. My new suit ran well but i felt slightly heavy during the performance and struggled to keep off the bottom, a white card was shown and that was that. John Moorcroft (the daddy of dynamic no fins) re-gained his NR from Chris Crawshaw who broke it later that day and swam over 160mtrs, amazing!

Day two went well and we started static performances in the morning, i completed a nice 5min 01sec static and again came up clean & clear and was shown a white card (points in the bag!!) Later that day i completed a 136mtr dynamic performance which gave me my third competition PB and white card over the three events. I did miss judge my 140mtr mark in the pool which is what i was aiming for and again i felt heavy during the performance even though I'd packed a little extra air in my lungs than my previous dynamic no fins. It felt amazing to achieve the results i did and i placed 4th out of the UK men and 5th overall. There were some amazing athletes competing and again i continue to learn whilst watching and listening to them.

I warmed up during all my performances with some different types of holds etc before which i don't normally do but they really worked for me during this competition. Training starts again now for the UK depth competition which is hopefully being held in about 10wks time. Its been a long time since I've done any depth training so I'm hoping to get down to Chepstow over the coming weeks to tune myself in a little to the green depths once again.