The Lessons of History

To find out what I need to do, I need to know what my target is. The date is 5th March 2005,

the place is Belgium, and the event is the 5ème nuit de l'apnée - Coupe de Belgique AIDA 2005.



My aim is to put myself onto this list.



How realistic is that? I have only exceeded 6:14 ( in the water ) on one occasion, and only by

an additional 3 seconds. A narrow margin indeed. Several failed attempts ( one in competition )

around the six minute mark. So I need a plan for improvement.



The last year - 18 months I have been able to add about 1 minute onto my maximum breathold time. I believe a lot of this has been attributable to weekly pool apnea sessions, weekly 'dry' apnea sessions, and almost daily apnea walks. Although I can continue with this, I think some variation could have positive effects.



My last pool static was a miserable 5m50s attempt, which concluded in a slight loss of motor control on surfacing ( competition disqualifier ). A fortnight prior an attempt to six minutes had been 'clean'. One noticeable difference in the lead-up to last week's pool static, was a period of 2-3 days previous where I had no breath-hold conditioning at all.



On Sunday I abandoned my normal routine of aiming for a 6-7 minute dry breathold, and instead used the Pelizzari / Solomon CO2 conditioning 'table'. This involved 1x3 minute rest ( breathing ) period, 1x4 minute breathold, and then subsequent rest periods that reduce by 15 seconds each time, and subsequent breathold periods that remain constant at 4 minutes. The end is reached when the rest period is reduced to 1 minute 15 seconds. Adds up to just over half an hour of breatholding within a 50 minute session.



Since then I have managed a couple of average duration apnea walks, and hope to complete another tommorrow. Hopefully I will then on Thursday be able to hit 6 minutes without incident, at my pool training session. We shall see.