This is a post by Sanne.
Last night I drove out to Nieuw-Vennep for a static competition organized by Nanja van den Broek’s organization Enker. The traffic didn’t pose a problem as I anticipated, so I was even in time for the inscription and judge speech. Although one judge was sick and one other freediver had called in sick, the cafetaria was filled with competing freedivers. Jorg was supposed to be joining as well, by after having another session with the dentist the pain was just too much to bare and he decided to stay home. It’s great to meet people in real life, after you spoke with them over the internet, although sometimes it takes a few minutes to recognize someone (Sorry Frank 
)
After everybody was inscribed and preparations were made to the pool, the competition started with the safety freedivers doing their own static’s first. After that Judith van de Griendt and Mark Keijzers were the organization’s safety. Besides all the gadgetery display, the competition was fun to be competing at. Exchanging experiences and learning from other freedivers is what comes first at these events, even if you don’t compete or compete against the big guns it will always be good thing to join for the learning experience. During the event I also grabbed my Android phone and tried make something out of the live coverage for Shark-freediving.com. You can watch the material in my Ustream channel here.
I promised myself the minimum of 3m30s would be satisfactory as I agreed upon with Jorg. Got into my Elios suit, which felt strange as I was almost the only one wearing one of those these days. I watched Eric and Jouke’s performance before I entered the water and eased into the competition area. Had a few laughs with the safety and started my breath up at 2 minutes before official top. Slow breathing with a normal rythem of 5 seconds in and about 20-25seconds air out always feels comforting. One or two seconds after official top I submerged and immediately the thoughts came into my head: “Here we are again, so why am I doing this?” Time to get rid of those thoughts and replace them by the experiences I had during my work day. Worked pretty well. At about 2 minuntes the contractions started and Not much later Mark Keijzers tapped my 1st tap @ 2m30s. Tap 2 and 3 came pretty quickly and I had reached the satisfactory level for myself. It all felt ok and I did two extra taps as I had promised myself and Eric to take a few extra contractions. Came up clean and did my surface protocol, waited for Erik Skoda to present my white card and there it was another mission accomplished.
It all might sound strange for people who used to know me as a guy who could static’s over 5-6 minutes and now not even being able to do so. But this has everything to do with me getting back on my feet after a succesful step back. I take things slowly and keep the fun factor high, hopefully this way I can get myself to fight off some more contractions. As long as I’m willing to do this for my own benefit and not for expectations of others, which is mostly the thing when my head starts thinking on automatic-mode .
Nanja thanks for organizing a nice event and let me express myself in your own words: “I always love competitions like these!”
This is a post by Sanne.
This is the wisest lesson I can learn from my little mishaps last Saturday. Although the bad luck came from a totally unexpected angle, this is usually how it works with testing out new setups in a competition for the first time. Everything from my prototype to a borrowed suit from Eric van Riet Paap, went fine and was no problem what so ever. It actually went wrong when I used a swim cap in combination with my normal swim goggles. As it turned out the cap-material was to slippery for the head band to not fully hold the swim goggle cups against my eyes. Immediately after take off, they started making water. Normally a little bit of water is no problem, but it kept going until fully filled and yet it kept on passing by my eyes. After 33 meters of little disorientation I called off the first attempt and surfaced somewhat flabbergasted, it was only at my second attempt I realized it was actually due to the swim cap. So having to call that one off as well. So after my both failed attempts I got rid of the swim cap and did a quick 50 meters with only my trusted swim goggles and all was fine. Lesson learned
Besides all that I had a great time safetying all other competitors doing very great performances & national records and running around for the live coverage to happen. All in all I’m very pleased with my new prototype and I will shed some light on that with more details in a next post.
This is a post by Sanne.
As you might have read in my previous posts, I am preparing to compete in the Shark Sports dynamic competition, this Saturday in Tongelreep, Eindhoven. I have no set goals for this competition, but I just have to prove my self a minimum I agree upon on the day itself. 
Furthermore I’ll be swimming with a new prototype for better alignment. In combination with the new monofin we now use, it’s going to be interesting for myself to just compete with the new setup!
Besides the fact of competing I’ll be doing safety as well, gives me a chance to wear my Gara 3000’s again.
Yesterday I’ve been setting up the streaming ability for the camera, which we are going to place behind the window at the 100 meter turn point in the pool. This should deliver a few nice images of competitors making their turn against the window. Hopefully the wireless connection is strong enough to reach that basement the Tongelreep created to view/analyze what athletes are doing underwater.
So if all is proceeding according our plans, than the competition will start at 14:00 CET, this is also the time that the LIVE internet broadcast will start. If you’re unable to join us at the Tongelreep in real life, then surf to http://shark-freediving.com/live/. I’ll start the first run, so I can do the safety for the other competitors. Hopefully it will be lot’s of fun and good atmosphere, see you all on Saturday 14:00 CET.
This is a post by Jorg Jansen.
Yesterday Team Sharkbait together with Shark Sports organized the first Shark Hot Tub Static and it was fun! It was a really small competition with only 4 people, but Team Sharkbait was the force behind some new things we are trying to do with the sport of freediving.
I’ve talked before about the fact that static is the most boring thing in the world to watch for an audience. So we have some ideas how to make it more interesting to watch and especially more recognizable for people. All these different masks, preparation rituals, no talking, quietness, yoga, etc don’t make up for a fun event.
During the event yesterday we purposely prohibited warming-ups and equipment. This way everybody was chatting, laughing and having fun, and when they said they were ready they took their 2 minute countdown and started their static.
Everybody was pretty sceptic beforehand, but I guess now they’ve tried it, it felt pretty good and especially trainable. We’ve got some more ideas for the future, so more fun competitions coming up.
Results of yesterday:
- Sanne 4:47
- Daan 5:03
- Nanja 4:34
- Natascha 4:02 (PB)
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