Time to end

I haven't been able to train as much as I hoped during the last week. Today I did manage to get some done and managed 6:30 without packing. Not bad! But I can tell I was close to my limit. I can't remember exactly how many contractions I had, so even though there was no physical samba, it was definately close.

My haemoglobin has gone down almost 20 points. At it's highest value it was at 174 and now it's hanging in the 150s. Still fairly high, but that's a big enough difference to make up for a few seconds definately. I'll now try to improve that with a combination of exercise and diet. I was doing a lot of apnea jogging when it was in the 170's, so I'll have to assume that helped.

I've also decided to stop writing here, it just doesn't seem to serve a purpose anymore. At least not every breath hold I do. Maybe I'll come back and update some significant milestones of findings, but not regularily.

Another reason for that is that I don't want to set my self up for too high expectations. At the last competition, I was already exited before even getting into the water because people knew about my 8:00 and I knew they knew. So I knew people were expecting a lot.

This time I want to go into the competition as just someone who's "in the 6:30s". If I can pleasantly surprise someone, then so be it :)

Slow progress...

Ok, today I did the same thing as yesterday. It felt really tough, but I was able to inch a few seconds forward. It seems that without packing, contractions are much harder to resist.

5:35 (3:15/35)
5 min rest
6:10 (3:45/27)

Seems like low numbers, but I have to remind my self that this is with no packing. I think the highest I've ever done without packing was 6:30 and that was in the middle of a hard preparation for competition, meaning I was in shape.

Restarting again

Ok, 3 weeks and no updates. I've been laying kind of low...I did do a few statics but nothing special and didn't feel like writing because it was not structured "training" per se. I've been concentrating on CW and just having a break.

I started again today. I decided to give "no-packing" statics a try again. I would like to rid my self of packing...If not all together, at least limit it, as I'm still fairly concerned about long term effects on the lung. And besides it's good training. If I can do, let's say, 6:30 reliably without packing, then I should be able to do it even more reliable with moderate packing at a competition. So I'll set my sights on that, 6:30.

I also don't want to repeat the fiasco of the last competition. I want to further simplify my warmup. For now I'm going to try this. A "90% effort" static as a warmup, then the max attempt after a short break. Along the way I may experiment with an FRC hold either in the beginning or in between. But that's aboslutely the maximum warmup.

Without packing, this comes to about 5:30 as warmup and then 6+ on the actual attempt.

So todays figures:
5:44(3:20/33)
6:03(3:40/30)

As you can see, very low count of contractions. I'm not really worried though...Given that I've been on such a long break, I'm sure even by tomorrow it will look quite different.