I captured this video of a recent training session. An interesting training tool that Sergei brought to the pool. It is an Oxygen Meter that also measures heart rate. It really demonstrates how long after you start breathing it takes for the O2 to be replenish in your system.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo7U9CyZV0w]
Here are the final results for the mens and womens CWT
I have a copy of the anounced depths for the CWT Finals. This event is performed with a fin and is the deepest of the pure freedive events. The current World record for women is held by Natalia Molchanova at 101m and for men is Martin Stepanek at 122m. Natalia is here and has anounced 98m but Martin is only here in a coching role. We will not be seeing a world record tomorrow but we will se some national records broken if everthing goes well.
The safety team is in good shape for the finals. A few of us have worked through ear infection. Not suprising because we have been spending up to eight hours a day in the water. Only Matt from the team trains in salt water so it is a little out of the ordinary for our bodies to spend so much time in salt water.
This is how it looks for tomorrow:
This post have been “stolen” from Roberta and Matt’s blog: http://robertaandmattfreedive.blogspot.com/
Mask Tan” is a hazard that most freedivers face. Spending so much time on the surface, we are exposed to a lot of sunlight: however, only select parts of our bodies are exposed, so some weird tanlines result. The most common pattern is that of the eyes cheeks staying pale where they are covered by the face mask, while the rest of the face achieves a deep tan.
So, being the competitive guys that we are, a mask tan competition has developed. I submit photographic documentation of the first week of the contest:
William Winram and Herbert Nitsch were nice enough to lend us their spear fishing gear, so we could go out and have some fun. We have now gone spear fishing twice so far and both trips have brought home dinner.
Yesterday we went out spear fishing after saftying the women’s constant weight competition. We were joined by the German freediver Heidi and her husband Mark. We started out from the beach, which is across the street from our house, and swam out to find something to catch.
We hadn’t been swimming for to long before spotting the eagle ray shown in the video below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0vwjKkbzeo]
After about 45 minutes I saw Martin go down and shot his spear into a small hole in the coral. When I dove down I could see the antennas from the large lobster he just shot. I went into our floating bucket to get the glow we brought so I could help him with the spiny catch. When he pulled out the spear and lined up for my camera, the lobster twisted so much that the spear tip twisted off. Martin let go of the lobster and went down for the spear tip, because we borrowed this gear and didn’t want to loose it. You can see this on the video and I am happy to report that we found the tip, and I was able to catch the wounded lobster again by hand and but it into the bucket.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXOQPPko_us]
After this catch we saw a small Black tip shark, which came around to see if there were anything it could eat. Unfortunately I ran out of battery and couldn’t film it, but I followed it for quite some time, because sharks are fascinating to watch when they swim.
We found another reef, were a school of Bermuda Chub (Matt is our resident fish expert) were swimming in and out of the holes in the reef. After waiting for a while at the edge of the reef, one of the fish swam close enough that I could get a good shot. We placed the Chub in the bucket fairly quickly, but some blood did get in the water, and it only took 5 – 10 minutes, before the sharks were back. As soon as they realized that there was nothing to eat, they disappeared again.
Martin had already left and Heidi and I was trying to catch more Bermuda Chub, but they had gotten scared so we started swimming back to shore. On the way back Heidi shot another fish, which got away from her and went into a hole. After going back down, and shooting it again, the sharks were already there and she had to give the fish to the sharks.
Another amazing day of spear fishing. Other things we saw were the Lion fish below, Turtles, baracudas, a few small squid and lots of other fish.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncvg0PHd3aw]
That night we had another great dinner with freshly caught fish and lobster and enjoyed the company of Heidi and Mark.
This video has been filmed and created by Sergei and it shows the work of the safety team very well.
It was a very impressive day, with 6 men diving 100 meters or more.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9shN3-YNtU]
7 competitors are going to be diving to between 100 and 105 meters tomorrow. This is outstanding because it was in 2004 when Carlos Coste set the world record at 102m breaking through the 100 m mark. Good Luck Everyone!
Something new at this competition is the use of a glow in the dark rope for the competition line. Because the blue hole has only has a 20m opening at the surface light fades quickly beyond 50m. So the glowing rope gives the athelete a point of reference. Even though the rope glows for many hours after being recharged we still pull the line up every 1.5 hours to recharge it on the platform.
We mentioned earlier that we would talk about other safety systems being used here at the world championship. To explain the counter ballest system we first need to explain that in Freedive depth events an athelete swims down to a preanounced depth. At that depth is what we call a bottom plate. Attached to that bottom plate are tags that the freediver is to retrieve. Under the bottom plate is a 20Kg weight, a light and a bottom camera to record the performance. The rope that attaches to the bottom plate is premeasured while wet and under stress. Markers are placed on the rope so that the rope can easily be moved up and down to the announced depth. In this case the rope runs through two blocks at the surface and off the back of the platform. The rope that is off the oposite side of the platform has a 40Kg weight so that if the rope is released from the clam cleats on the platform the heavy 40Kg weight will sink and will pull the bottom plate to the surface. Because the athelete is attached to the competition line with a 1m lanyard the diver will also be pulled to the surface. The setup here is really nice because a lot of rope is exposed to the surface and during our trial activation 4 people helped the rope run in the direction of the counter ballest significantly increasing it’s speed. Briging a diver to the surface at about 1.5 m/s.
Igor Liberti is the official photographer of the 2009 AIDA World Campioships. He has generously sent me some proofs to share with our readers. If you are interested in his work please check out www.apnea.ch
