Video fra 77m Konstantvekt

Så kom endelig videoen fra dykkene jeg gjorde under årets Bizzy Blue Hole. Merk at det er 77m og ikke 80m slik det står i innledningen. For å se videoen i mye, mye bedre kvalitet se: http://vimeo.com/11840802

X-BBH

So many things didn`t go according to my plans this time. I was planning for a 14 day trip with lots of training before the many comps. Instead I got a 7 day trip with 3 days in Dahab before the competition. Did I mention the ashcloud?? In the end I was just very happy to travel afterall. Staying at home with nothing to do with all the bags packed etc for 8 days was not a lot of fun! So Steinar and I went one week. Either one of us had done any deep diving before travelling. We did some empty lung diving in a 5m pool. That`s it.

I trained all of the three days prior to the comp. First day max 30m, second max 50m and the last day I did max 52m. It felt great and I really wanted to put some meters to my PB. And I wanted the National record in CWT. So what better to do than to put 10 m on my PB and 1 m to the NR.

A lot of things were new this year. I was finally able to see something when I was diving deep. The Nirvana fluidgoggles are superb. If the price was 1000 Euros I would start saving right now. I was also keeping track of my depth with my depthalarm on my Mares Apneist. I just put it inside my hood and set it to beep on every 15m. Excellent for divers with little training. I also had a new, fantastic suit from Eliossub. 2mm Daiwabo neoprene with lining. This time I was trying to loose as much as I could of my buoyancy. Together with this suit and with less packing I only needed 1kg of lead. This makes it so much easier. So now I`ll try to think of air only as something to equalize with. I also feel much more relaxed during the dive. Very different from my dynamics is also the warm-up. Two FRC-dives, starting at about 15 min before OT. If I get a blackout sometime after a deep dive, I`ll consider doing no-warmup.

The 77m dive was not so pleasurable. I was really stressed out by doing a 10m PB. Also because I went from 5m to 77 in 4 days. And from 52m to 77m in 20 hours. The start went fine, I kicked slowly for a long while. Maybe 45-50m? And I had my arms over my head all the way down. Very easy to keep balanced through the freefalling like that. I lost my mouthfill at about 60m, managed to do some reversed packing and equalize once more at about 65-70m. The last bit I didn`t equalize. On the way up I was not very confident until I passed 30m. I slowed down to make a controlled surfacing and everything went fine.

What I didn`t like about this dive was the 12 hours before the dive. Very stressful, making the diving not so pleasant. Almost no sleep and food says it all. That`s why I decided to do a safe and easy dive the second day. I announced 60m CWT. That was a smart call. My best dive ever! I was relatively calm before the dive and technically everything was perfect on the way down. This time I was facing the correct way. When I was freefalling past 40?m I started seeing some strange light down there. The Arch opened up so beautifull to me and I stopped at the plate for a few seconds to enjoy the moment. Truly mesmerizing! Off course after 5 m of swimming I thought it was a bad idea to stop for a few seconds, but a couple of seconds later I was confident again and enjoyed the rest of the dive. Stay tuned for the video from BlueEyeFX!

Norwegian Championship

Organizing this competition was a great experience. The hard part was competing myself whilst keeping the comp going. Every athlete helped with safety, judging, filming, shouting the countdown etc. In addition to the athletes I had 2 good helpers from the club, Georgios and Roman and of course my Sandra was also helping out. Titus was working for free that night which helped us financially. And he was also getting "everything" we needed. Thanks! We had a freediving competition with 12 athletes, two diciplines only 4 helpers and made this in 1hour 35min. Efficient!! Next time we`ll have alot more time in between I hope.
Østfoldbadet was great and the conditions were excellent. We even had a reporter there for the first 15min. Unfortunately (I think?) he got very good pictures of the only athlete having a blackout. He was out for almost 10 seconds I think. In the second round of static I was up. I really wanted to make a personal best. (5:32) And more than that I wanted to piss on Steinars National record! (6:09) In dynamic No warm-up and No breathe-up have made wonders for me. But since I`m just crap at static I did warm-ups and and quite severe hyperventilation just to postpone those contractions. I actually prefer doing 4min dynamics instead of 4 min statics. Anyway, everything went ok. Contractions at 3:15 instead of 1:20 and I made it to 6:13 or 6:14. Not yet confirmed. I was very happy of course but it was also very close to a blackout. When the judge (Elisabeth) told me the time, I thought she was kidding with me. I was sure it was 5:50! Nice surprise. For the dynamic I was not sure if I was back to normal after the rough static. It felt ok, but it also felt very different from a normal dynamic so I went up at 153m. Afterwards I was happy I ended it there. So... Gold medal for me, silver for Steinar "Shaggy" Schjager and bronze for Trond Klimek. Here are the rest of the results:

Utøver	Sta	Dyn	Total poeng	Plass
Bjarte Nygard	6'12	153	150,9	GULL
Steinar Schjager	5'14	126	125,8	SØLV
Trond Klimek	4'01	82	89,2	BRONSE
Eivind Kristoffersen	2'50	109	88,5	4
Terje Brandshaug	3'13	64	70,6	5
Simen Sørensen	3'45	60	70	6
Fredrik Naumann	2'37	55	58,9	7
Gordon McNair	4'13	60	50,6	8
Sveinar	4'40	100	50	9

Utøver	Sta	Dyn	Total poeng	Plass
Elisabeth Kristoffersen	4'03	142	119,6	GULL
Maria Hovden	4'48	109	112,1	SØLV
Linn	0'39	25	20,3	BRONSE

FreeWC09

First post in English. And what a great occasion to do it. As many of you already know I became a world champion in the freediving dicipline "Dynamic no fins," with a swim of 199m. Since I`m a very slow blogger I need to post something new. So what`s there to say? Here are some facts I`m pretty sure you didn`t know.

Did you know that during my brief stay in Aarhus I watched 16 episodes of the show "The Sopranos?"

Did you know I made a mistake with my Mp3-player before the DNF-final. The result was that I listened to Aretha Franklin`s "Respect" over and over again in repeatmode for more than 15 minutes?

Did you know that I decided not to participate in DYN? I felt sick, and was so happy about the DNF that I was really content about the WC. Two hours before OT I grabbed a taxi and went for it. I`m glad I did.

Did you know that before the DYN-final I really had to go 5 minutes before OT. And I did. I really thought about that during the swim. Hope noone sat down by the side of lane 8!

In the end I just need to say that this was just an insane experience. My progress has been great, and this championship has been on my mind since the end of Nordic Deep 2008. In the end when Sebastian was handing out prizes he mentioned me as the best performing DNF-athlete in ND, and said: "I guess we`ll see you in the next world championships." My DNF-career has been like a very slow lottery. You see one number after another going in. Ending in a full jackpot!!

Oslo Ice Challenge 7-8 mars, 2009

Så var det endeleg klart for Norges første fridykkarkonkurranse og verdas første fridykkarkonkurranse under is. Initiativtakar og leiar for konkurransen Steinar Schjager la ned mykje arbeid i dette prosjektet. Eg blei med som assistent og blei overraska over kor mykje som måtte gjerast. For å nevne eit par ting: oppmåling av tau, snømåking, saging i isen (med håndsag!), frakte utstyr opp til Lutvann, lage diplom, lage t-skjorter, sette opp varmetelt, innlosjering av deltakarar osv, osv. Eg trur at det som gjorde at me anstrengte oss litt ekstra var at det kom så mange dyktige fridykkarar. Det var verdensmesterar og verdensrekordhaldarar til stades. Dei fleste av norges beste fridykkarar var der og.

Me var ikkje spesielt heldige med vèret denne helga, men det gjorde det nesten endå meir spennande og meir ulikt enn andre konkurransar. Sjølve dykkeforholda var bra. God sikt og eit stort fint hòl å dykke i. Den første dagen bestemt eg meg for ikkje å konkurrera, men å delta som sikkerheitsdykkar for dei andre deltakarane. Det var ei stor oppleving å svømme nedover for å møte fridykkaren som var på veg opp igjen.

På søndag skulle eg konkurrere med eit dykk. Det skulle være til 40 meter og med svømmeføtter. Eg dykka med 3mm Elios drakt, monofinne (hyper) frå Triton, naseklype og svømmebriller. I denne konkurransen hadde eg med ein medhjelpar og. Sandra passa på at eg hadde alt utstyret og hjalp meg med fylle svømmebrillene med saltvatn. Deilig å kunne slappe litt meir av! Dykket var stressande på veg nedover, og eg rota litt med utligninga. Men oppstigninga gjekk veldig enkelt. Kanskje det var derfor eg tok det så rolig på veg opp og gjorde den idiotiske feilen at eg holdt i lina på eit punkt. Det blei gult kort og 5 poeng i trekk. Men eg klarte dybden og var fornøyd med det. Dersom eg skulle få ein lærepenge ein eller annan gong, så er eg glad for at det blei i denne konkurransen.

Det var 3 dykkarar som nådde maxdybden på 52meter. Vinnardykket blei på 46m utan svømmeføtter og blei gjort av Franskmannen Guillaume Nerÿ. Andre plass gikk til svenske Christian Ernest og tredje plass til franske Christian Maldame. Seierspallen i massiv Lutvannsis fekk gjort nytte for seg. Av andre norske resultat så kan det nevnes: Steinar Schjager 45m CWT, Thomas Grindevoll 52m CWT (og 30m CWT uten drakt), Elisabeth Kristoffersen 35m CWT.
Ellers var det veldig hyggelig at Sandra og Anette var med heile helga. Dei tok bilder, filma, steikte vafler, baka bollar, klådde på meg og Steinar, delte ut suppe osv. Foreldra og søstra til Steinar hjalp og til med nydelig mat og eit digert varmetelt. Kanskje dette blir ein årleg begivenheit?
Sjekk ut fleire bilder her: http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/felixfeatures/gallery-show?G_ID=G0000Ec2A8DfBADU

Forskningsprosjekt på Ullevål

Onsdag 28/1 deltok eg på eit forsøk på Ullevål. Studien prøver å finne ut om det er mulig å få emboli (luft i blodbanen) som eit resultat av lungepakking. Ein del fridykkarar har opplevd symptom som dei fleste har meint er trykkfallsyke. Her er teorien at dette kanskje kan skuldast luft som siv ut frå lungene som følge av pakking.

For meg så begynte dagen med at me skulle ta ein spirometri der dei målte lungevolumet (VC) med og utan pakking. Resultatet blei 5,3l utan og 7,0l med pakking.
Etter det var det rett på ei sjukeseng og anestesilegen sto over meg med ei monsternål. Først stakk han nåla inn i ei vene (blodåre) i albuen. Så førte han ein plastbelagt metallvaier inn i den samme vena (blodåre), vidare opp gjennom overarmen og inn i hjertet! Og når han kom dit, kjente eg det faktisk. Eg fekk eit ekstra hjerteslag faktisk.

Etter mykje stikking og kobling var det avgårde til radiografane som skulle ta CT av meg. Så der låg eg då med slangar stikkande ut frå armane, ein målar på hånda, og ein lege som tok ultralyd av brystkassa medan eg fekk beskjed om at eg snart skulle byrje å lungepakke. Så etter ei lita stund låg eg der og holdt pusten medan CT-maskina gikk og Ove frå hjertekirurgen tok ultralyd av meg. Etter 3:30min pusta eg ut og dei hadde alt dei trengte frå meg. Dei hadde ikkje oppdaga noko luft på avvegar i kroppen min.

Endeleg ein trenar

Etter å ha trent ei stund utan noko særleg kyndig veiledning dukka det opp ein moglegheit til å få eit treningsopplegg med ei av verdas beste kvinnelege fridykkarar. Ho heiter Kathryn McPhee og held til på New Zealand. No er det dynamisk utan finner (DNF) eg er mest interessert i og difor er det lovande å bli trent av ei som har verdsrekorden i DNF. Sidan ho bur på andre sida av jordkloden vert dette eit opplegg som går via INTERNETTET!! Me har bl.a videosamtalar på skype ein gong i veka og så lastar eg opp videoar frå treningar som ho kan gje tilbakemeldingar på. 

Sidan eg aldri har helde på aktivt med svømming eller gått på kurs reknar eg med at ho kan hjelpa meg mykje med å forbedra teknikken min. 

Mi første oppgave frå Kathryn var å gjera eit maksimumsforsøk utan oppvarming. Dette grua eg meg til. Når ein utelet oppvarminga vert dykket som regel endå meir ubehageleg enn det vanlegvis er. Eg hadde mine tvil denne gangen sidan eg berre har vore i basseng ein gang på 5 veker. Likevel så gjekk det over alle forventningar. Min gamle uoffisielle rekord frå trening var på 160m. Denne vart forbedra til 176m på mandag. Her er videoen frå Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijwf1_g4s7o