9th Coupe d'Apnee - Montreal freedive competition

After placing 3rd at Nationals, I had 1 month before the Montreal pool competition to continue training before getting a chance to set new personal bests and give it my all.

Everything stayed on track and I knew I was prepared and essentially had no excuses - all I had to do was perform when the moment came.

I was looking forward to this competition, as it was to take place in a 50m pool that was a constant 3m deep, which would make it perfect for freediving for DYN.  I had wanted to try a 50m pool for 2 yrs, since I first started the sport.

Oh yeah - one potential hiccup - the pool was outside and on May 25th in Montreal... that's a coin toss at best.

As it turns out - we lost the coin toss!  8* and windy / rainy on Saturday and 12* and rain on Sunday.  At least the pool was 27*.

For static, people were staying warm in 5mm suits, but for DNF 1/2 of people mis-managed their temperature and were shivering before their official top.  I got into the water much later than normal and still started to feel a chill coming on.  I dropped to the bottom of the pool for a minute where the water was warm and away from the chilling air on my face / head / neck / shoulders to warm up.

I surfaced with 2 mins remaining and did 1/3 of my planned breathe-up and managed a personal best 112m and won gold for the event!  Lots of room for improvement and conditions were far from ideal as well.  Quite encouraging.

For DYN with my monofin, I again got into the pool quite late and risked a chill, but managed things well and swam a personal best 169m.  My previous PB was at Nationals a month earlier with a 136m swim and I KNEW that I could have made 150m... so the game plan was to swim 150m and see how far I could go beyond that.  Turned out to be the right game plan and was executed well.

I was surprised at the distance and did not expect to swim so far, considering that a year ago (and 2 max attempts ago) I had just managed 101m, which was a real benchmark for me after my first year of training / diving.  

Both of my DYN and DNF performances re-set new Provincial records from the ones that I established at Nationals a month earlier.

As it turns out, in DYN only one other diver in Canada has swum further (a professional freediver and one of the top 10 in the world) and only 3 others have swum further in the USA - making my swim the 5th longest DYN swim in North America!

Take a look here:

That performance was enough for me to solidly secure the overall win for the competition - my first!  Here is the overall final podium:

A sample of the beautiful medals handed out by CASM.

My aquatic background

Kid:
While born in Canada, I lived in Atlanta and Texas from the ages of 2-7yo.  Of note is that in San Antonio, each neighbourhood has a public pool, due to the extreme summer heat.

While I think I took an introductory swim lesson on how to tread water in Atlanta, I stopped them early on and found it was much better / easier / more efficient and natural and faster for me to simply swim underwater, breast stroke style.  Instructors kept trying to correct me on how this was wrong.

Before DVD's, iPads and video games my parents would keep me busy by throwing handful of coins into the pool and tell me to fetch.  I would try to get them all on one breath... and this was a challenge at 8' deep with no weight belt to keep me down.  I don't even recall using a mask!

A scuba diver showed up once at a pool when I was in Florida on vacation when I was about 12 and invited me to try it, although I was reluctant.  After about :10 mins, it was obvious that I was not interested and didn't like all of the equipment and buoyancy issues.  I've had no desire to scuba dive since.  I've since realized that over 50% of freedivers start in scuba and many continue doing so in parallel.

Teen:
Back in Canada, I did nothing aquatic for 10 yrs, when my parents put in a pool.  I just screwed around with the diving board, cannon balls / jack knives etc.  All swimming was done underwater, as it was the natural way for me.  It was really just something to relax in on hot summer afternoons and have a BBQ around.

I do remember my first mask - it was a giant 3-window squared-off mask with huge volume and made of natural rubber.  It never fit well and as it aged and the sun ate it, it got more and more leaks until it was useless.

I remember taking a piece of retaining wall stone onto my lap and sitting at the bottom of the pool, but bailing at approx the 1 min mark.  I only recall doing it a few times and then getting yelled at as the pool had a vinyl liner and the stone would rip it.  I was also doing it alone... so that was a potential disaster waiting to happen.

All grown up:
I did nothing aquatic again for 10 yrs, when I discovered Freediving and Freedive Toronto, 2 years ago!
I've been hooked on all things apnea ever since.

Hydrodynamics

Below are some freeze-frame video grabs from Canadian Nationals a month ago, where I took home the Bronze as 3rd overall in Canada.  I have since made some slight changes to further improve my "slipperiness" through the water.