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Day 6: June 4th, 2004

Written by Rudi Castineyra

Welcome back all, and yes, we have a new world record if you were wondering! Today Yas reached 42 meters to set her 7th world record, the second in unassisted, while David did a personal best of 55 meters. Both dives went well and they had plenty of air left at the surface, I think each of them had a few meters left in them, but don’t let that fool you into believing that things were very easy or simple.

This morning both Yas and David woke up with….it doesn’t sound good or glorious but here it goes….diarrhea! A real bad case of it, they were weak and tired, and even their morning stretch was a bit consuming. I think that, as we went around on our rest day yesterday and ate out, dying to get away from the hotel food for a bit, we actually got a bit of food poisoning. What an irony. Nobody else on the team had the problem, and of course, our divers were joking that maybe they were perhaps a bit, uhh, well, nervous before the dives ? but the truth is that for the majority of the last 3 months, they have both been eating engineered foods: protein shakes, vitamin pills, supplements, recovery drinks, liquid amino acids, glutamine formulas, etc, etc, etc. Which, though not too tasty, is indeed quite good and healthy as far as we are concerned, and the only way to be able to produce high performance results during demanding training periods that must also be shared with regular work days. The only negative side of this diet is that the stomach becomes really delicate and sensitive, accustomed to basically pre-digested foods, and when you hit it regularly with something as spicy as Turkish cuisine, specially the hotel and tourist restaurant varieties, well, you may find yourself indisposed. So, we gave them anti-diarrhea pills, waited an extra 1.5 hours for it to work, and headed out at around 11:00 am, not so late after all. The set up was very quick and I felt very thankful to the team, for their extra effort to not make Yas and David wait any longer than they needed to.

Yas dove first, and as she went down, I could see right from the start that she was still weak, her muscles probably functioning at 60% capacity at best, but she adapted to the situation by adopting a “conservation” strategy, saving energy to the max. Her strokes were very slow and deliberate, relying more on technique and proper hydrodynamics than strength, and I knew right away that her dive time would be off the mark we had set of 1.48 min, with an actual time of 1:57 min, a descent of 58 seconds, 1 second retrieving the tag, and 58 seconds for the ascent, giving her an average descent speed of 0.72 meters/sec and 0.74 meters/sec for the ascent. The bottom plate was at 42.7 meters. She made the ascent in 12 strokes, for an ER (Efficiency Rate) of 3.56 meters/stroke. Though all these numbers are less impressive than her last dive, she still managed to do the dive in only 9 more seconds than planned, not bad at all, and amazingly, reached her free fall point at 15 meters with only 4 strokes! Well done Yas, though we won’t be uncorking any champagne tonight, we will certainly celebrate, it has been over 2 years since her last record and she deserves this result, after working so, so, so hard for it. Congratulations! The judges for the record were Arthur Zaloga (Lithuania) at the bottom and Gianluca Cora (Italy) at the surface, and now we’re just waiting to find out if the diarrhea pills are considered doping ?

As for David, today’s dive was very important, because it allowed us to really gauge how close to our predictions and hopes we are. Contrarily to Yas, who has the benefit of having done lots of deep dives, specially on the sled where you really gain a sense of confidence and what-can-I-do, David has never been past 60 meters, so every time we do a dive approaching that mark, he feels justly concerned, specially with equalization. So, it was great to see that this 55 meter dive was so good, he looked the strongest I’ve ever seen him on any dive, he had lots left in him, I would venture, even for a 70 meter dive! And, since he was also weak and nauseous from his stomach problem, having accomplished this result not at 100% is all the more satisfying. David’s dive time was 1:57 min, which is a great time considering he lost about 9 seconds at the start fixing his noseclip, which had slipped off. His descent time was 56 seconds, for a speed of 0.99 meters/sec, and his ascent time was 60 seconds, at a speed of 0.93 meters/sec. He completed the ascent in 16 strokes, for an ER of 3.48 meters/stroke, less than before, but do keep in mind that as you go deeper the ER will decrease, since those first few strokes from the bottom up are quite hard with the diver being so negative. Thanks to this result, we are considering attempting David’s first record tomorrow, tentatively to 63 meters, so we’ll check our numbers, talk among ourselves and the team and make a decision soon. We will let you know. Cheers everybody!

David’s Comments:

Was a good day indeed. However I seem to have a repeating problem with this damn nose clip. This is exactly what caused my last 63m attempt to fail last year in October. Anyway, after a couple adjustments at about 6-10m I continued the dive. Felt really weak from the whole…you know…the thing that Rudi said ?. I wasn’t sure how the dive would be with this decrease in performance, but as Rudi said, usually the easiest dives are done in these conditions. It was true. I managed to complete the dive very strong and didn’t experience any contractions. However, I did have a little trouble equalizing at around 47m but with a small diaphragm contraction I was able to force some air into my mouth and compensate for this. After that everything was smooth sailing. Rudi said it’s the strongest ascent he’s ever seen me do and it really felt that way. So we have decided to give the record a shot tomorrow. Hopefully the ears will work the way they are supposed to and clear for me. Want to thank everyone for the countless e-mails of encouragement…it really helps. Thanks again and keep on reading!

Yasemin’s Comments:

First of all I’m very glad to have reached a record finally after 2,5 years of break. We have went through a lot, especially the serious pancreas operation I went through. Although I’ve been very healthy till then compared to before, feeling a serious difference, I still didn’t know how this was gonna effect my freediving. So having reached our target so fast with just 3 dives broke the whole concern I had. It was a difficult dive, more before than during the dive itself. In the morning I felt so bad and weak from the diarrhea I even had to do the stretching routine sitting down. I felt very nauseous, weak and tired the whole morning. So it was one of those very unpleasant dive days, but I knew I had the strength for the dive in me, so we went ahead with the plan. Once I started diving there was no problem anymore, as always I was absolutely set in nothing else but doing the best I could do. I was gonna stop after 5 strokes and start freefalling, but I realize that I actually stopped after the 4th one. I felt myself to slow, but I decided to conserve energy and do a little longer freefall instead. On the way up, again I didn’t apply my full strength, because I knew I had enough air for the dive, but maybe not enough strength with my current situation, so I took it very easy, and all turned out to be the right decision. It was a great dive where I was even less tired then how I felt after our first dive to 30 meters. Another problem I had is getting my noseclip loose right at the entrance, I think my hand touched my noseclip’s line and caused the problem. Therefore I was loosing tiny little bubbles on every equalization. Tried to fix it once, but at the same time didn’t wanna loose my hydrodynamic alignment much, so had to equalize very carefully not to loose much air. Anyway what counts is the final result. We’ll keep up the hard work and hope to have even better news for you in the upcoming days…