It's not called respiratology. It's respirology, and people who study it are called respirologists. Lung stuff, basically. There exists an association of these respirologists, and last summer they were looking for extreme sports people to talk at their annual conference. I'm all for lung power, so I volunteered.
As Christmas 2007 approached, I found myself spending hours hunched over my laptop, desperately attempting to piece together a PowerPoint presentation on my favourite topic ( meaning freediving this time, rather than myself ). All for twenty minutes' worth of stammering, wildly gesticulating, sweating profusely and nervously laughing. My after-dinner presentation style has been emulated worldwide, mainly by 19 year-old best man victims.
Location-wise, I was posted to the outer regions of Nuneaton, to a hotel called The Paramount Hinckley. Not nearly as bad as you might imagine, it was what I would like to class as The Hotel Babylon of The Midlands. Glitzy lighting and do-la-la-la lounge music. They put me in a room with a tiger stripe bed spread and black pillow cases. When I had told them that I could "gee, go low" perhaps they misunderstood.
Arriving there at about 7pm or so, my plan was to get a bite to eat, watch a movie in my room and then early to bed with the tiger. Food was being served in the bar, and so was the Leffe. Before the froth had time to settle on the first glass, a guy at the bar struck up conversation with me. An exercise physiologist from Loughborough University. He'd been talking earlier in the day, to a packed auditorium of 300 people. Up until this point, I'd guessed at a maximum audience being roughly a third of this. So he gave me the low-down on the layout, stage and equipment. Not to mention a heightened state of nervousness. The Leffe drained away quickly, and needed refilling.
My new found friend had another engagement, and I was nowhere near my original objective of attending to my growling gullet. No sooner had I ordered some food though, than I was next accosted by a group of Scuba diver respirologists. How do we all find each other? Must be a shape thing, as we all had size 7/10 T-shirts on. Diving tales and Belgian ales show no respect to timekeeping, and my early night developed into a late one. The saving grace being to avoid the Karaoke session at the end. I was prepared to make a fool of myself on stage just once on this trip.
Whenever I compete, the night before the performance I don't sleep. My nerves build up to a crescendo until the point I get into the water, and then they just dissolve. At the Paramount, I thought I'd try the same technique before the presentation by going for a swim beforehand in the hotel pool. The calming effect worked until I emerged from the water, showered and looked in the mirror. Panda eyes with dark circles stared back. Not so much lack of sleep, more that my goggles had been on too tightly. With an hour to go, I tried reciting the presentation in my head, but all I could think of was the audience wondering what I had done to get two black eyes.
I was slotted into a pre-lunch session alongside two other speakers in the same subject area. One was a researcher into hypoxic training, and the other a project manager for a recent experiment into altitude effects on physiology, where the research took place on Mount Everest. I was first off the blocks, and my competition calming technique kicked in. Perhaps a little rushed, it was all over in about 15 minutes ( aren't so many things? ), but at least left a good 10 minutes for the questions. The other two then took their turns. The next seemed infinitely more scientific than my presentation, and the final one seemed that bit more enthralling than my accounts of underwater derring-do. I wondered if my talk was just a little too anecdotal - light-hearted, but little substance of anything that really mattered to the audience.
As everyone dispersed for lunch, my exercise physiologist friend approached, along with a couple of others. The talk had been a resounding success, by all accounts - well, theirs at least. More importantly, they were keen to follow up on my offer of freediving volunteers for medical research. ( My freediving comrades are yet to be enlightened on this, of course. ) Several ideas were put forward. Neurological function measurement pre and post Samba or blackout. Performance gains through respiratory resistance training. Analysis into the effects of Buccal pumping. All worthy topics of investigation.
Perhaps we are moving toward a point where we freedivers need to think about putting something into medical research that doesn't involve ego massage. Of course it is superb to marvel at how much vital capacity we each have, and how our haemoglobin is so efficient at transporting oxygen. Isn't it what makes us so great? Going that little stage further though, there might be wider benefit in knowing a bit more about the long-term physiological impact of freediving. For all of us.
A final word on the photograph. It is a Triumph motorcycle, perched behind the Atria bar at the Paramount Hinckley. Not entirely sharp, but think of it as motion blur. And a triumphant presentation.
