Just one month left before the CIPA Open in Nice kicks off. Last weekend, I spent a very pleasant 2 days training with my saltFree mates at the NDC. The two main objectives for the weekend were to do a 50 metre dive, and a 20m+ dive with the new housing ( without camera inside ). The dive went like a dream, apart from a sticky right ear about 2m from the plate. It was just good to get there, as it’s been 8 months now since hitting anything deeper than about 45m. Housing internals stayed nice and dry with all knobs and buttons fiddled with at 25 metres. The NDC was the wettest I have ever seen it on the Saturday, and the busiest I have ever seen on the Sunday. The saltFree’ers were a bit more thinned out than usual, but no less good company. Sometimes the peace and quiet of diving with two or three others, easily makes up for the shallower depths we often dive in those situations.
I’ve also nearly completed the intermittent hypoxia training phase, of my two-phase static training programme ( see previous posting ). This is very experimental, and something I may well not repeat again. The unconventional ‘IHT’ has been demanding, and co-incided with a certain amount of not feeling 100%. I’ve had stomach pains and mild nausea, along with general tiredness and feeling ‘washed out’. There’s every possibility that this isn’t actually doing me any benefit, and could actually be doing the opposite. At least I have been through the hypercapnia training before and had no ill-effects, so I feel confident going into this phase.
Last but not least, I have decided to announce my static record attempt to the BFA. Records Officer Steve Fuller encouraged me to take this step, in order to raise the profile of UK freediving. As BFA Press Officer, I can hardly argue with that.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Thursday, April 14, 2005
From Byway to Highway
An eventful week not quite over, and with more to come at the weekend.
Firstly, training started in earnest last Sunday. Much huffing and puffing in an attempt to make myself hypoxic for about an hour. Even I'm questioning the sensibility of doing this to my body on a daily basis over 3 weeks. Whatever I'm doing with free radicals, I seem to have at least proved that doing this stresses the immune system. By late Sunday evening I had the mother of sore throats, followed the next day by a full-on head cold.
The training itself ( after all, this is what I created this blog for ), consists of 60 second bursts of hypeventilation, followed by a full-exhale static ( which ranges in duration from 30 seconds up to 135, and levelling at about 120 ). So over one hour, this roughly equates to 20 minutes of oxygenation, and 40 of de-oxygenation. I would rate this as being more aggressive than the IHT training I underwent last year, although I'm not wired up to an oximeter and pc in order to compare. Certainly the side effects feel quite similar to IHT - rushing noise in the ears and micro-sleeps being two examples.
As well as biting the hypoxia bullet last Sunday, I also jumped on the Broadband bandwagon. It's not the 8MB highway currently being paved through the ether, but a somewhat thinner 512KBps service. Fine for me and the Elf, though, and it means we can both simultaneously exist in cyberspace under the same roof. The router arrived yesterday, and to my ( pleasant ) surprise, it turned out to be a BT wireless model. All I need to find now is a pcmcia wireless network card that matches, and we should be up and running by the weekend.
Obviously a week of much-wanted deliveries, the Olympus PT027 ( underwater housing ) arrived today. Not yet unpacked, something else for me to fiddle about with at the weekend.
Firstly, training started in earnest last Sunday. Much huffing and puffing in an attempt to make myself hypoxic for about an hour. Even I'm questioning the sensibility of doing this to my body on a daily basis over 3 weeks. Whatever I'm doing with free radicals, I seem to have at least proved that doing this stresses the immune system. By late Sunday evening I had the mother of sore throats, followed the next day by a full-on head cold.
The training itself ( after all, this is what I created this blog for ), consists of 60 second bursts of hypeventilation, followed by a full-exhale static ( which ranges in duration from 30 seconds up to 135, and levelling at about 120 ). So over one hour, this roughly equates to 20 minutes of oxygenation, and 40 of de-oxygenation. I would rate this as being more aggressive than the IHT training I underwent last year, although I'm not wired up to an oximeter and pc in order to compare. Certainly the side effects feel quite similar to IHT - rushing noise in the ears and micro-sleeps being two examples.
As well as biting the hypoxia bullet last Sunday, I also jumped on the Broadband bandwagon. It's not the 8MB highway currently being paved through the ether, but a somewhat thinner 512KBps service. Fine for me and the Elf, though, and it means we can both simultaneously exist in cyberspace under the same roof. The router arrived yesterday, and to my ( pleasant ) surprise, it turned out to be a BT wireless model. All I need to find now is a pcmcia wireless network card that matches, and we should be up and running by the weekend.
Obviously a week of much-wanted deliveries, the Olympus PT027 ( underwater housing ) arrived today. Not yet unpacked, something else for me to fiddle about with at the weekend.
Monday, April 04, 2005
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