Kona

I have to put in some culinary content here, so below is a picture of Lava Java, which is in the main plaza in the center of Kailua, Coconut Grove. It has excellent food, from coffee and pastries to full-on dinner. Our group eats there all the time -- Performance Freediving should try to get a deal or commission from them, but the company is way too busy with its core-mission to have time for things like that.

Saturday
I finally got my act together to do a max breathhold in the pool. If you don't get a consistent procedure down, then it's hard to do a max breath hold, you experience a lot of discomfort, and if you're lik me, you wind up quitting early. That's why, e.g., I only did 5 min yesterday. Today felt pretty good, so I was going for 6:30. I planned to "wake up" at around 6 mins (conserve energy for the first part, then wake up at the end to monitor whether you are going unconscious/hypoxic). However, I started to go hypoxic at 5:40, so came up at 5:45 with what we call a loss of motor control. Instructors said it was probably beccause I did a lot of deep diving yesterday. Hypoxia from one day does not generally carry over to the next day, at least not in a major way, but I guess it does in a minor way, and this incident is an example of that, as 5:45 breath hold shows a diminshment in oxygen capacity, but a minor one. However, since oxygen deficit does affect the rest of the day, because of my incident, I would not be allowed to dive the rest of this day.

The rest of my time in Kona is going to be spent on safety drills and learning instruction, so I might not get a crack at 50m or even 45m. That's OK because it's actually more important for me to perfect my technique to 40-42m than to just force it down to 50m. I may get to squeeze in a few of those between drills. I also will be able to practice some 40-42m if I teach for them in coming months.

Friday

Did an easy 5 min breathold in the pool (Ben did 6:30 yesterday). Went to the ocean and did two 41m pulldown dives fairly smooth, but not perfect with the equalization. I have never had been able to get beyond 40m with at least some pause for equalization, but I'm getting better. Also I did not feel tired at all after doing 41m dives, so my tolerance for depth is getting better.