Walking again

After resting for the weekend, I started again.

2:33/156m (no packing)
2:47/182m
2:40/156m

Again I'm surprised how good the first one went. Maybe packing is really not that good for dynamic? The difference seems negliable, I think tomorrow I'll try all of them without packing...

On the second one, I walked noticeably faster, which resulted in the longest distance so far. It seems my normal strategy is definately too slow!

On the last one, I tried to go slow, maximize the time. But I had packed way too much and was very uncomfortable. Somehow packing makes the breathing reflex intolerable in dynamic.

After doing this, I logged to deeperblue and saw some very sad news. Two active members have died in a car accident. I didn't know either of them personally, but still, I'm at a loss for words. Just a few weeks ago I was chatting with Alison about something completely trivial. I think it was the "wolf fish" that I have as an avatar. But now, she is just gone...

Hasty walks

I decided to do some quick walks. I didn't really have time to concentrate, but I figured it's still useful to do something, to keep it frequent and consistent.

I managed:
2:20/120m (no packing)
2:54/150m

So all in all ok, considering the preparation.

Small progress in the pool...

I have to admit, I was slightly disappointed. I was hoping for at least 2:30, but the best I could do was about 2:20. Still, it's a bit better than last time.

There was a photographer today taking pictures of some of us for a story in the local newspaper. They were posing right in the middle of the lane, where I wanted to surface. I didn't want to come up one camera having a huge samba, so I took it a bit easy. Maybe I could've pushed to 2:30 on a normal day, I dunno...

Anyway, progress is progress. Can't wait for the next time

As to be expected...

The progress is of course rapid in the beginning. Made 3 minutes today! Pretty cool. Now, if I can get to 3 minutes dynamic in the pool, I'll have truly achieved something...

So here's the series:
2:00/121m
2:37/143m
3:00/150m

As you can see, the speed I walk varies greatly. I'll have to try to find an optimum speed in the pool also.

I was again surprised how well the first one went. Two minutes without packing and no warmup. Hmm...

Apnea walks

Ok, nothing much. Did the same thing as yesterday:
1:40/104m
2:28/156m
2:45/162m

Observations:
On the first try I did surprisingly good. This was virtually no breathup and I didn't pack. Usually the first one is barely a minute! I also ran lightly the last 2 "laps" (each 13m), which felt surprisingly effortless.

On the second, I kept a faster pace than yesterday, thus reaching a much longer distance in much less time.

On the last, I tried to go as slow and relaxed as I could, but I guess I was still going faster than yesterday, judging from the distance. I got to tell you, I was at my absolute co2 limit, if I had gone one more second, "things" would've started to happen...

Anyway, surprisingly good considering I just came back from the gym. I would've expected it to have had a more dramatic effect on performance. I'm pretty confident I'll reach 3 minutes soon. Have to remind my self, it's not (currently) about the distance, it's about the time...

Dynamic apnea challenge

I've been experimenting with dynamic a bit. I've been more or less ignoring dynamic training for the past year, having concentrated on static.

My pb in dynamic is 115m. I've hit similar distances a few times, but also had sambas.

If you compare my dynamic and static results, you can see that they are really out of propotion. I should be swimming at least 125m, and pretty easily.

I also had one samba on 42m cw dive a few weeks ago. This simply won't do!

It seems that when ever I start to move, my apnea performance decreases very sharply and I want to improve that. Since the open water season is more or less over, that means improving dynamic performance.

So I'll start logging my progress here again, to keep track of it. I'm too lazy to keep a real training diary.

Soo...Starting off.

The first thing I'm trying to improve is time, not distance, as you might think. I want to be able to swim a longer time, no matter what the distance. Currently a max dynamic (100-115) takes me about 1:30 and a max cw dive about 2 minutes.

So at the pool my experiment today was: swim as long as you can. So I set off, told my buddy I have no idea how far I will go, I will just go really slow. I swam as slow and relaxed as I could, not really paying attention to technique...

I came up at 2:17 and 100m, and had a visible samba. Now as you can see, I won't be breaking world records anytime soon. For the "slow style", good divers will go 3-4 minutes and the "fast style", people will swim twice the distance I did for the same time. As I'm pretty convinced (from my static performance), that I would be best suited in the "slow style", my first goal is to up the swim time to about 3 minutes.

So back at home, I decided to do some apnea walks. I had previously done 2:30 once. Almost pissed my pants and passed out. No idea what the distance was, as this was outside.

I've got a fairly big apartment, so I decided to do it in the safety of my home. I measured that from wall to wall, I can get a route of exactly 13m.

-First try 1:30 (didn't count the distance)
-Second 2:00
-Third 2:30
-Fourth 2:45/130m

So I've now set a baseline. 2:45/130m. I was seconds away from samba, but it's a start. In fact I was surprised I could get such a good result on the first try.

So let's see what I can do to improve that...

My theory is that my body is simply not used to working in low oxygen, even if I can hold my breath really long in static. So it would make sense that I need to condition my self to do just that: hold my breath and do some kind of movement. Apnea walks should be a good tool for that...(of course, so are dynamics, but I can't access the pool enough to do any serious "adaptation" training)

Lung volumes

Starting to recover from the post competition blues and finding motivation to train again. I made a crude device for measuring lung volumes. In essence, it is a bucket, to which I poured water in 0.5l at a time and marking a "scale" on the side of it. It is then filled with water in the pool and you use a hose to fill it with air. In theory, how high the bucket raises from water, is your rought lung volume. Of course it's not very accurate, but it should be within the right ballpark.

I measured about 6.5-7 litres without packing and 9-9.5l with packing. If you consider the weight of the bucket, you could perhaps add another 0.5-1l there, so let's say:
7-7,5l without packing
9.5-10l with packing

I was actually expecting more, but still, that's a pretty good sized lung. Of course we're not talking about TLC, since this does not take into account the residual volume.

It felt good to be in the water again, and I managed a 7:00 static, which is good considering how little I've been training lately...