So this is about the competition in Hajdúszoboszló. I am happy with the results and I think I managed quite well. Friday was a long day. I had to wake up at 3:30 Central European time and my official top was at 19:30 something if I remember right. First I had sat on the bus for two and half hours, two hours plus on an aeroplane and in Hungary three hours in a car. It was a long way there but I made it.
When I saw the starlist I was stunned. I was set as the last one and I had to ask Szabolcs could I be set a bit earlier. It was my luck that one guy didn't start so I got his place as the second to start. My dnf went fine. I had not practised it but on Tuesday I had made an easy 75 metres so I was confident. Anyway I was very tired during my warm up and when my official top came I wanted only to go to sleep. I made 90 metres and I must be happy. My AP was 75m and I knew I could do it. The pool was 50m so I didn't excatly know when I had passed it so I went as far as I felt comfortable. I got white card and things were okay.
On Saturday morning there was static apnea. My official top was at 11:15 so I didn't eat anything nor drink coffee in the morning. Missing my morning coffee was a hard one. I made some frc-statics for warm ups and one with full lungs. I was surprised to make an easiest 4 minutes ever. The warnings started after three minutes and it was so relaxed and good one. When my turn came I almost got late. I didn't hear the countdown very well and the first to hear was one minute. It didn't ruin my attempt but things happen. Anyway my performance was a bit weaker than the warm up by the feelings but I managed to do 4:53. Propably I could have made a 20 seconds longer one but I still wanted that white so I played it safe.
After static I had a chance to have my coffee and eat something. I think I ate a bit too much because when my dynamic warm up came I was thinking should I throw up. There's not enough room for full lungs and full stomach in the same body. When the official top came I felt better. My AP was quite high (125m) and I had only made 110m in training so I was not very confident about my dive. I told myself that it doesn't matter if I fail - it's only the white cards that matter. I knew I could one houndred no matter what and told my self to do 15 kicks after the turn and I would be past my AP.
When to come up? Well that's a question. I count my kicks and when I cannot do it anymore it's time to surface. If you start counting you can't stop it anymore. First it bothers you all the time but when you keep on going with counting it becames automatic and almost subconscious. Some people say you loose your concentration and relaxation if counting but I think the idea is to make this counting so automated you don't need to pay any attention on it. And when you hear the numbers flowing you always know excactly how close to the turn you are.
So I came up at 144m when I lost the ability to count and my mind was very clear I say. For some reason the safety freediver grabbed me. Later I heard that he was behind me and he saw the situation very differently. I was hanging in the rope and balancing with with monofin still doing little kicks he thought I had problems and grabbed. He did what he thought was the right thing to do and I am not mad at him. Of course my first reaction was furious. Why he grabbed me!
The reason for my acting was that my only goals were to get three white cards. I have had far too many red cards in my competitions and that far they had all came for reason. If you have a black out you've got only yourself to blame. This was something different because my dive was so good and I decided to surface when it was still going well. It is a horrible feeling to get a red one when it wasn't even your own fault. But anyway the safety freediver is not the bad guy here. In safety issues it is always better to act than not to act if you think should you act. Thank you Balázs and Kars for cheering me up.
I made a protest and got a second attempt. There was a 45 min gap between my two tops and it was good. I had already made my warm up so I didn't want to do it again. After being angry and protesting I still had some 20 minutes to hang around in the pool and maintain the diving response. The second official top came and I was more relaxed than on my first attempt. The problem was that there was a little anger left inside me and I couldn't go just for the white card because I was thinking I should do the same or even more. I surfaced again when I lost the ability to count my kicks. The second dive was 135m and it was not as good as the first one in metres nor feelings. I was so much closer to samba and I don't know if I even had a small one. At least some guys told me I wouldn't have passed the former lmc-rule though they are not judges.
The results came and I was sixth. My dsq dynamic and loosing nine metres didn't have effect on the overall results and I was happy about it. It was funny to see the results because I had concentrated only on myself. I didn't have a clue what the others had done. Actually during the competition I payed no attention to the others and what the others did was something I was not interested about. This was the very first time when I managed to forget what other people do. Previously I have been interested in other performances but I have found that I get excited seeing long dynamics and feeling like I want to do also a very long one. If you go for metres it is more likely to have a blackout but if you go for a white card it is more likely to surface in right time.
The two weeks before the competition were very hard. I got some problems with my heart a couple of weeks before the competition when I surfaced after a 100 metre dive and it was beating very irregularily for 45 minutes. I went see a cardiologist and he made an ultra sound and there was nothing wrong with my heart. Altough I got really scared because of this incident and I still don't know excatly why I had it. On Monday the doctor said I could dive again and I was so relieved. Anyway I had lost the training of the last two weeks. According to that my competition was really good.
We had a nice after party in a local restaurant where the food was good and beer cold. I enjoyed the discussions I had with the Hungarians and it is obvious we where talking mostly about freediving. We had a nice house for accommodation and in the morning Szabolcs took me and Kars to his car and drove us to Budapest. Again we were talking about freediving. We went to Yellow Submarine Hostel in Budapest, left our luggage there and went out for lunch. We found a nice restaurant called Oliva. I wanted something Hungarian and potatoes with pork medallions with something called letcho. It was so good that I cannot describe it!
Afer lunch we had a walk around the Danube and went to say hello to the protestors gathered in front of the parliament. Keep on going! Back in Yellow Sub we found Daan and Kim who had taken train from Hajdúszoboszló to Budapest because they wanted an adventure. Anyway the trip had gone fine so there was no real adventure. They wanted to have something to eat so we went back to Oliva and I had some other wery good Hungarian food with potatoes and chicken. I think it was chicken. And talking about freediving continued.
A new adventure started in the morning. I had ordered an airport taxi to pick me up. I told my flight was to depart at 11:40 and they said they'd pick me up two hours before. I wasn't really confident because I had seen the traffic jams and the ride from the airport to Budapest had taken an hour on Friday. Anyway they assured I'd make it even the guy at the reception was wondering would there be enough time. We got stuck something like four times and finally I got into check-in a couple of minutes before it was closed. There was quite a lot of adrenaline in my blood because of this.
Thanks for Szabolcs for organizing and for Serge too and everyone else in the organization. It was a pleasure to meet you Balázs and all you Hungarians in the same table in the after party: hope to see you again. I had a very nice evening in Budapest with you Kars, Daan and Kim.
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