Last weekend I participated in the 6th Silesian Freediving Cup. The competitions' main goal is to promote the team spirit among freedivers as well as encourage women to freedive - so only teams of 3 could take part in it and at least one of the trio should be a female.

I teamed up with Robert Cetler and Julia Kozerska and we won the team classification.

The competition started for me on Friday December 11th at 6 a.m. when I woke up and went to work. After work at 2 p.m. I went to Rybnik (a 1,5h drive) to register and be one of the first competitors that day. I swam a solid 200 m without fins (DNF). On the next morning I have accomplished 8:00 minutes in discipline of static apnea (STA). After that on the same day I competed in the dynamic discipline with fins (DYN) and I swam only 178 m , which secured first place for my team and fulfilled my declared result. 

I won the overall individual classification as well. However, it is worth noticing that a Czech competitor Martin Valenta was very close to win individually, unfortunately he ended up with red card in DNF. 

You can read about last years' Silesia Freediving Cup 2014in my previous blog post.

Photos by Patrycja Radiowska-Polak

 

Last modified on Wednesday, 16 December 2015

A bit than a month ago on October 24th, 2015 I participated in the Zlin Cup 2015 - a freediving competition focused on two pool disciplines: the STA and DNF. I have been attending this competition for years, except last year when I went to compete in the Vertical Blue '14. This year I could go back to my tradition and participate in the Zlin Cup 2015. I won the Cup, but unexpectedly this competition brought me a lot of satisfaction. 

After a failed static (7:31) I was loosing 40 seconds to Martin Valenta (CZK) who pulled off 8:11, breaking by 5 seconds Czech national record of Martin Stepanek, which wasn't broken for 14 years and was a World Record established in 2001. 

I was watching his start while trying to relax in the water. Less than 5 minutes before my OT I saw Martin coming up on 175m. He did a very solid performance after a big static result. His good result meant I had to swim 192m to win the whole competition. At this moment I thought “it’s gonna be tough”. Normally, this distance is easy for me, but let’s not forget that we did the static beforehand, and a 2nd swim during one day can’t be as good as the 1st one.

It turned out to be one of the best dives in DNF I have ever done. Great control, great feelings and when I turned at 175m I knew it’s “mine”. I swam until I saw the “T” mark, because I knew it’s already more than enough. This way I made 197m when I surfaced very clean. If I’m not mistaken it’s the longest DNF in the world done after a STA during the same day. I only hope to have the same state of mind one day when I will try to break the world record in DNF again, because this execution was perfect despite all the anxiety beforehand!

You can check the results and details on the Zlin Cup 2015 website or if you understand Polish, you can read more about the competition on Apnea Sports.pl.

 

Last modified on Tuesday, 08 December 2015

On Saturday, November 7th, 2015 I was a guest in a Polish morning show "Pytanie na Śniadanie", shown in the Polish TV station.

The topic we were talking about was unusual passions and I got to explain in a few words what freediving is and what my achievements are.

Here you can watch the few-minutes-short episode (Polish only).

After that I visited Polskie Radio 24, a information-centered Polish Radio Station, where I talked about freediving a bit more.

You can listen the recorded podcast here (Polish only).

I also visited the Polskie Radio 4th Programme, the audition was broadcast in the evening.

Here you can listen to the audition (Polish only).

Let me know if you got to watch or hear me!

Last modified on Thursday, 12 November 2015

The AIDA Individual Depth World Championships have just finished on Sunday. Since September 5th, 2015 until September 20th, 2015, the best freedivers in the world trained and competed in the Mediterranean Sea in three depth disciplines: CNF (Constant weight apnea without fins), CWF (Constant weight apnea), FIM (Free immersion) in Limassol, Cyprus.

The weather and water conditions during this championships were a bit tricky and have definitely had an impact on the performances of most of the athletes. 

The first days until September 11th was the time when we could get used to the conditions in this location and train. An September 11th was the official opening of the World Championships.

The competition days were as followed:

September 14th – CNF competition

September 16th – CWT competition

September 19th – FIM competition and award ceremony.

Two medals

I have brought home two medals: Silver and Bronze.

The silver one in the CNF discipline with a dive of -76m (Constant weight apnea without fins) and the second one, Bronze in FIM with a dive of – 103m (Free Immersion). Both of these results were actually far away from my National Records and capabilities.

The preparations

Before going to Cyprus I was telling myself that one medal, doesn’t matter which color will make me happy. 

I was preparing for two months for this competition, mainly developing chest flexibility and equalization technique in my local quarry. In the last two years I prepared in the same way and everything went just as planned then. However, the Mediterranean Sea turns out to be completely different than the locations I have previously competed: the Red Sea or the best place in the World, Dean’s Blue Hole. 

Comparison of my dive profiles from Cyprus and Dean's Blue Hole

A look at the dive profiles comparison shows that my opinion is not unfounded. The shallower dive you see on the profile is the one from Cyprus this year and the deeper one is from Dean’s Blue hole in November 2014. 

I used the following setup for both dives:

Same number of packs in both scenarios, in Cyprus I wear 0,75kg (total of 2,15kg) of lead more and a suit that's only ~200g more buoyant. 

Simply said, I had to wear more weights to have the same freefall speed and use a thicker suit to not freeze completely due to thermoclines. (A thermocline is a thin but layer in the water in which temperature changes more rapidly with depth than it does in the layers above or below.) On top of that because of thermoclines my body was tensing up and I was losing my mouthfill bit by bit while descending. (Mouthfill is a technique of deep equalization. Air is taken from lungs to mouth before they are compressed. That air is used all the way down to equalize ears and sinuses. If air is lost once lungs are collapsed it can't be recovered and I have to start ascent, otherwise if I would keep descending, increasing pressure would create pain in my ears and eventually it would rupture my ear drum.) The way up was significantly slower because of all that extra weight. Additionaly, an extra slow down on last ~25m is due to my new safety precaution regarding DCS (decompression sickness).

Diving in the Red Sea would be better only in term of equalization, because there is no big thermoclines there, however, the buoyancy problem would be the same. 

Training in the Mediterranean Sea before the competition

When I arrived at Cyprus in the beginning of September, I was stuck at 70 - 90m for almost 2 weeks and I felt just like 6 years ago when conquering those depths was a challenge in term of equalization. Luckily because of all my experience and knowledge now I managed to reteach myself how to do it and I didn’t need another 6 years :) I simply got used to the conditions while trying out all sorts of weird techniques. 

I’m extremely happy with my last 103m dive that brought me a bronze medal. I have equalized right before target depth which would result in at least 110 - 112m. I never thought that I will leave Cyprus reaching that point again. 

A big part of my success is the fact that during summer I was anticipating early morning starts and I trained my maximum dives in similar conditions time-wise. Some of the divers were not prepared for it and their capabilities were reduced.

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I’m extremely thankful to my life partner Ola, for being the best coach ever and Grena LTD for their support!

Right now it’s time to rest.

In the remaining part of the year I will focus on pool competitions.

Last modified on Tuesday, 22 September 2015

On July 11th, 2015 I took part in a very interesting amateur Road Race Competition in the highest mountains of Poland - the Tatra. The professional organization by athletes who have been in the biking cirlce for years and are still competing in top-class competitions made the Race one of the most difficult you can face in this area.

I competed on the shorter distance of 42km, and won 1st place in my own age category, as well as oll-over male open category with a time of 01:11:15.560! I'm really happy for this achievement as this would not be possible without the help of Grena Ltd. providing me with a fantastic bike which allowed me to train hard all year long!

Last modified on Wednesday, 15 July 2015