NICE AIDA Open 2006

[BennyB]

The Nice Cipa Open will be held this weekend in.... you guessed it, Nice, France. This is looking at being the biggest comp of the year so far with 78 athletes attending the constant weight, static and dynamic competition. There are some big names amongst them all - Herbert Nitsch, Guillaime Nery, Peter Pederson, Stig Severinsen, Timu Jattu, Timo Kinnunen, Johanna Nordblad, Caroline Debuissy and a whole bunch of French athletes that will no doubt pull some deep dives.

Mark Harris, Theo Ivanovic and myself are heading across for it (and a week in the sun? ). Mark has been finding form in training but has been troubled by a lingering flu for a while. Haven't talked to Theo for a while, but based on previous form he should be capable of a 60m+ dive. Me? I'm just going for the croissants? . I haven't been in the water for a while so i'm not expecting miracles but my old PB of 32m will hopefully be getting a decent nudge, assuming I can equalise ok.

The Canne Film Festival is just up the road so it's going to be pretty busy there with all the additional movie type folk. If anyone has any scripts send them on before the end of the week and i'll be sure to forward them on to Ron Howard?

I'm heading out in the morning, i'll try and get online during the week to give updates on the training days plus the Constant Weight comp (Saturday) and the Static/Dynamic (Sunday).

Cheers,
Ben

[Watts]

Yeh i got this story about this mild manered accountant that turns into a fish in france. How do you think that will go down?
  All the best over their mate. Oh and say hi to Ron for me .

  HAVAGOODONE  Nat

[Wal]

Go Benny !
We expect some regular updates of the competition! 
You can tell us all about the dynamic final with you Herb and Peter P, how you are all looking over your shoulders wondering where the other will come up......

[BennyB]

Tuesday 7pm.

Been an interesting trip so far. At the airport I wqs slugged 15 quid excess on my mono.... not impressed so far but not earth shattering. Once at my hotel they promptly told me that there was no booking for me and the hotel was full, even though I booked and paid 2 months earlier. After over 3 hours of argument and paper chasing they had a room ready and by golly it was worth the wait, overlooking the port and the blue ocean. I wandered for a while and found 2 yellow zodiacs, remembering that CIPA had 2 yellow boats. I went up to the first guy I saw and before introducing myself he smiled and said "Ben, how are you?" France 2, Benny 1. Francois Gautier was the organiser of the comp, and in a continuing trend i'm finding in Europe, asked me if I knew Sacha Dench. Later, we went for a dynqmic session at a university pool. Francois picked me up in literally the smallest car i've ever been in, with 2 passengers to boot; Quickly I was introduced to Timo Kinnunen and Johanna Nordblad, 2 fantastic freedivers who were getting squashed even more now I was on board.

 The french are amazingly well organised with a trqining session taking up the whole pool with programs written on the whiteboard. Seeing as I haven't been in the pool for over a month I wanted to take it easy and just do some technique laps. The french guys are a nice bunch and we went out for dinner afterwards.

Today, training was at 2pm. Not being too bright I decided to hike up a local mountain in the morning. I was tired as hell by the time I arrived at the port. I looked around and it was a real who's who of freediving. Straight away Peter Pederson came and introduced himself, he, Stig Severinsen and the other danes drove over 1500km to save on plane tickets. That's the danes for you. Herbert Nitch was sitting over one side and let me tell you, this guy has a real presence about him, very slick, almost imtimidating (for those of us below 50m anyway). Training was in 2 boats, over 60m and under 60m. I found the conditions quite difficult warming up with a lot of others and using a lanyard for the first time. I announced 40m but decided to try for 35m instead as I was tired and it had been 9 months since i'd been in the ocean. I made the distance ok but got contractions before i'd got to the bottom, not the best but plenty to improve on. In any case it was a new PB for me. Vis was about 15-20m, water temp 18 deg.

Tomorrow training in the morning Theo Ivanovic has arrived (a mate from london) so we'll train together. Didn't hear much about the other guys but they all made their dives. The big guys were doing around 70-80 I think. I'm keeping qn eye on Herbert...

Got to go, internet cafe is kicking me out.

More updates tomorrow.

Cheers,
Ben

[Wal]

Hi Ben,
good to hear from you. Yeh hiking up hills isn't really the best training before a deep dive. 
Getting early contractions probably has a lot to do with nerves. It is tougher training with a lot of people on the line, I did that in Cyprus was a bit of chaos. People everywhere and then when it's your turn you feel rushed as other people are waiting on you.  Just have to do the best you can and relax, do your breathe up and warmups as normal.  Tomorrow you have to go for the 40m, you will make it easy!

Also good training for you would be after doing your max dive, do a bunch of 20-30m dives, just get comfortable in the ocean with your monofin, practise duckdiving, layard and tag grabs. It may be hard to do in the "official" training with all the people around. You may be better off buying your own rope, or team up with someone with a float & rope. If they insist you can only use their rope during training, then later you can always swim out from shore with a buddy and just work on shallow stuff. It's a bit of a waste living far from the ocean, then when you have the rare oportunity to dive in the ocean you spend half the day mucking around just do one single dive.

Cheers,
Wal

[BennyB]

Right, update 2 on this crappy french keyboard?

Today training was at? 8am; Yesterday training was at 2 and the boat left at 2:30. Today I arrived at 8am and the boat was ready to go... bloody french?

The french guys use a counterweight system which is simply one rope sent down on both sides of the boat - a training line and a dive line.

I took 1kg off my belt so I had 3kg on my belt, 1kg on my neck. The neckweight is working out perfectly, I can't even tell it's on. I don't have any direction problems with it.

I bought a cressi float last night and used it to breath up on, much better than havin nothing. I did a pull down to 15m and stayed for 10s then slowly made my way back. It only took me 1 pull to get back from 15m so the kilo made a lot of difference. Next dive was a static for 30s at 10m, still getting early contractions so managed to sit a few out. Next 2 were passive exhales, the first to 10m and the second to 8m, I had trouble equalising on the 2nd.

I had a 10 minute wait to my turn on the dive rope. I announced 40m to the boat guy and he set the rope and gave me a 3 min countdown. I took a few purge breaths, packed and took off. My duckdive wasn't too bad and I slowed my kicks after about 10, somewhere around 20m. I started sinking around 30m but seemed to stop here and there so I gave a little kick to get me going again. At 36m I started to have trouble equalising, and started getting contractions again. I hit the plate at 40m, turned and headed to the surface. I was getting some pretty damn mean contractions half way up and I think this got me panicking because instead of stopping the kicks at around 12m or so I kicked nearly the whole way back. I also got away from the rope in the last 10m which probably used up time. Surfaced ok and did the protocol no problems.

In hindsight everything seemed reasonable or could be fixed up for next time, though the equalising seems to be an issue - I couldn't equalise at the turn at 40m so this might limit me until I can sort out this Frenzel business.

The other guys all made their dives, I heard Peter Pederson did 78m, not sure what Herbert did as he missed the boat and had to wait for the next one.

Hopefully 42-45m tomorrow but that will all depend on how the ears are feeling.

Cheers,
Ben

ps. thanks for the advice Wal!

[Wal]

Hey Ben well done on the 40m PB !
Equalising is tricky. Remember to do reverse diapraghm stretches on the shore or on the boat prior to your dive. If you aren't using mouthfill you can also reverse pack to help bring up the last tiny bit of air, should get 1 or 2 equalisations with that. If you are using mouthfill, don't look down !
If tilt your head up you are opening the airway, ruins the mouthfill, if anything you have to bring the chin down towards the chest.

What you can also do in training if you get stuck a few m short of the plate and can't equalise on a deep dive is just do a hang for 5 seconds or so. That way breathold wise you have simulated doing a deeper dive so you can still "back off" for your comp dive even if it's the same depth. Be careful and don't push too far past not being able to equalise, if you stuff your ears now you may not be able to do your comp dive. Even if you think you have gone too deep and you are going to blackout you have to convince yourself it's ok and you are going to make it. If you were in trouble you only make it worse by panicking, remember there are safety diver there and the best thing you can do is to keep calm and keep kicking at a steady rate.  Have you seen "Finding Nemo" ?
If you find yourself on a deep dive and it seems a long way up, I just remember what Dory said in the movie "Just keep on swimming, swimming swimming,  keep on swimming " :-)
 
Have fun training tomorrow.
Wal

[Watts]

 Congrats Benny good stuff.

[Wal]

I got a text message from Ben last night, he couldn't get to a computer :-

He has a very blocked nose but still managed to do a 42m dive today, in 1.18 and surfaced fine. The vis is 15m and water temp 19. He is still having trouble equalising even more so since he has a cold.

Anounced depths for the competition :-
Ben 40m
Herbert 109m (this would be a world record if he makes it)
Timmo J 91m
Peter P 82m
Theo Ivanic 75m
Stig S 60m

Go Ben, and go Herbert !

[Watts]

 Goin off mate wish i was there.

[Wal]

Got another text from Ben.
He made his 40m dive, congrats Benny !

Apparently Herbert reached his tag at 109m but had a BO on the surface.

[Watts]

 It would be great if they showed the dive profiles somewhere.

? ?GO BENNY?

[Wal]

Final results in:-

http://www.freedivecentral.com/a-results.php?num_competicao=3
http://www.freedivecentral.com/a-general.php?num_competicao=3


Well done Ben with 104m in dynamic,  40m constant, 4:18 in static, and 24th overall out of 58, not a bad effort!

[BennyB]

Sorry for the late replies, all the internet cafes were shut over the weekend, and somehow I managed to go through nearly 20 pounds on my phone in 2 days and so ran out of credit during the static comp.

The Thursday training session was ok, I heard Herbert had done 99m. Theo did 60m I think and had no troubles until someone pointed out that his liquid goggles were illegal as they were tinted. Luckily Stig generously offered to let him use his which were clear. Mark Harris did 56m in his first training session and felt pretty good.

Friday I took a lot more time stretching with Theo and Mark as well as pack stretching, and thought my dive out a lot more. My sinuses had been pretty bad by this stage and were slowly closing up. After my warm up dives I took off for my deep dive. I had the rope set at 45m with the intention of seeing if I could do 41-43m given the ears situation. I slowed the dive down this time concentrating a lot more on equalising. At about 37m I managed to squeeze another equalisation out which got me down to about 40m. When the ears failed I turned and came back up, this time with a few strong kicks then slowing right down and getting to about 12m and stopping completely and gliding to the surface. Total dive time was about 20 seconds longer than the previous day. When I checked the D3 I had made it to 42m in the end, not 40 like I thought. 

Herbert did 70m, probably saving his legs for the comp. At this stage we didn't know whether he would go for the world record or not. That evening we had to inscribe our depths so I decided I could do 40m, air hasn't been an issue, just equalising, so I took a punt and assumed the ears would get worse and I couldn't get to 42m again.

More tomorrow...

[BennyB]

Right... tomorrow never comes apparently... been busy all week with work and catching up on things. Where was I?

At the inscription meeting everyone was being a bit coy, except for Peter Pederson and Stig Severinson. We were all given Post It notes to write our depths on, Stig and Peter had an idea that Herbert was going for 109m, so they both had written 110m or 112m on theirs and had shown a couple of people to get the rumours going. Certainly worked cause there were a few excited people running around. Except Herbert though, I think he knew what was going on, or had his poker face down pat?

Saturday, Constant Weight day. I had inscribed 40m and so was supposed to be leaving at 10:30am, warm up at 11:06am and Official Top at 11:51am. As the deepest went first, there were a lot of people I was keen to hear about who would have gone by now. As I walked down the hotel carpark I saw Herbert and his mate walking back, his mate carrying a bottle of 02. They weren't jumping up and down or smiling, so I knew something was probably not right. I asked how he went and he explained that he made it to 109m, got the tag fine but had a BO on the surface. He didn't seem to upset about it so I wished him the best and headed down myself. Though as soon as he was out of site I was on the phone to Wal so he was probably the first person out of Nice to hear the results (don't underestimate the power of the OzFreediving Community Network? )

When I arrived there I found out that they were roughly 30 minutes late, due in part to a problem with Weine Gustavsson who had apparently had a nasty lung squeeze on his 70m dive. He had surfaced and performed the SP correctly then became very agitated and couldn't breath, apparently very stressed. They took him straight back to the port and into an ambulance. He was supposed to be in hospital until at least monday, though luckily the doctors said that there was just plasma on his lungs, not a squeeze as originally thought. He was up and about, spectating on the static/dynamic the next day.

We suited up and waited for the boat to come. I chatted with Johanna Nordblad for quite a while and she mentioned that she was quite scared of deep water. I found this interesting given her prowess in the pool. Eventually our boat arrived and we all piled in. Everyone in the boat except for Johanna and myself were French, so I dodn't really get to hear what was going on until the last minute when the boatie yelled out "Anglais?"

There were 3 boats - a drop off/pick up boat, a warmup boat with 2 training lines, and the competition boat with 2 comp lines which were alternated. After about 15 minutes in the boat with no-one knowing what was going on (the boatie was telling jokes in French), someone far away said through the loudspeaker that they were about half an hour late and we should add this to our OT times. This meant that I had already missed about 10 minutes of my warm up. I quickly entered the water and, slightly agitated, made my way to the warm up line. There were at least 5 people to a line and we were told not to do static hangs on the line. This got me a bit more agitated. I did a pull down to 10m and my ears were quite sticky, definite problems equalising even though i'd done 2 nasal washes in the last 12 hours and had cleared a lot of the gunk out. It took me about 10 minutes to get the line again which annoyed me further, then I realised that my D3 had been playing up and I couldn't get to the Time mode to see how long I had left. I asked someone the time and I had a bit under 15 minutes to OT. I did another pull down to 12m and then made my way over to the competition line and breathed up on a float.