Whenever I do a poopy dive (which usually means I turned earlier due to an equalisation SNAFU) I go home and then ignore my coach Bub messages all day, which is very hard because he won’t leave me alone until I talk to him. Since he knows me well enough, at this point he will already know that I had a poopy dive, but he wants to know why and how, because he enjoys poking my wounded dignity with his salty finger. So after 5-10 hours of pouting silence I give up and send him an update. But not last week, because even though I had the king of heart of poopy dives, I couldnt wait to get off the boat to tell him all about my black out. Somehow, in a rather messed up way, confessing a blackout feels more dignifying than confessing another early turn.
And so I sent him an 8 minutes ramble about my 100 meters bifins dive, which I’ll try to compress here in a 7:30 minute script for your enjoyment.
As with my other black out last august, and my 2 competition LMC’s, the story starts with some hyperventilation. I dont know why it keeps happening, sometimes I am aware that I am doing something different/wrong due to some unforeseen factors that I have to deal with last minute, and other times I think it’s all under control but turns out it isn’t. In this particular case, my plan was to take 5 deeper breaths before my last, instead of the usual 3. The purpose was to try delaying a bit the moment of my belly tension which comes at 40-60 meters and makes me want to swallow my mouthfill. As it happened, the freediver before me DNS’d (did not start), which generally gives you more time at the dive line, which is great in a way but also means that you potentially have a longer breathe-up even if you dont realise you are doing it. So probably that’s what happened to me, and then I did my 5 deep breaths, took my full inhale, and as I got to my third pack or so I felt a tiny tingle in my left hand. My following thoughts were, 1- uh, this is not good, 2- nothing I can do about it now, 3- my right hand doesnt tingle so maybe I’m just imagining it, and after my 6th pack I duck dived. As soon as I put my face in the water I forgot every single thing that just happened and left all of it on the surface, and my first 40 meters were just beautiful (many freedivers can attest to this feeling, for me is part of having a freediving brain – which is normally not a desirable thing, but it has some perks).
my amazing descent
The thermocline this day was gentler and shallow, which is good because I can deal with the change in temperature before I do mouthfill but not during or just after. At about 40 meters I started freefalling and I felt great thanks to zero current (and probably also courtesy of the hyperventilation); for maybe the 3rd time this year I didnt lose any air all the way down which was amazing, until I heard my 90 meters alarm, at which point my brain screamed “WHAAAT?” in surprise, and that’s when I swallowed all the air I had left, but I could easily bring some up (it’s easy for me to reverse pack if I’m very relaxed) and equalised the last 10 meters without effort. As I took a tag and I gave myself a mental pat on my shoulder in approval and I started to swim back up. And then I remembered that the part I dreaded the most was about to come, it was narcosis hour! I told myself to chill and not to fight it as hard as I did these last weeks in the hope that it would hit me a bit gentler. It didnt. I had all the bad thoughts I had before: I’m out of my mind; I dont know what I’m doing; and what if I want to stop finning now (and felt offended at the thought that I couldnt); I think I’m falling asleep; where the hell am I) All this plus the lesser focus because I was trying to ride the narcosis instead of controlling it made me even more confused. Anyhow, at some point a safety diver appeared in front of my face and I made a big smile because I knew I was getting toward the end of this nightmare, and that’s the last thing I remember. My mind slipped away, and dived head first into the most beautiful dream. I made it back to the surface on my own, mostly out of muscle memory and movement automation, broke the surface, grabbed some air with my hand (again), fell back face first and the safety team grabbed me and started to kiss me without my consent, which was bothersome because all that action was really interfering with my dream which I didnt want to let go of, and finally they won and I reluctantly woke up. You know how annoying it is when your alarm wakes you up in the middle of an amazing dream and you dont want to wake up so your brain tries to integrate the alarm into the dream so you dont have to let it go? That’s exactly the same thing. (I dont know if the majority of freedivers feel the same, but I only had 2 real black outs in my life and they both felt the same. Actually I will do some asking around to find out what most freediver feel before and during a black out and maybe write a post about it).
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- losing the rope the last few meters
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- grabbing air instead of the rope
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- still trying to grab the rope!
So that’s that, it’s hard to tell why exactly I blacked out: was it the hyperventilation? Was it my panicked reaction to narcosis, or a mix of the 2? Maybe I’m just tired and out of shape due to a long deep diving season during which I did almost no real training and I’m losing all my adaptation and fitness, but a few days before this dive I did 99m and came up very fresh (oxygen wise), and equally wasted with narcosis.
These are my only theories, I would like to know why (while keeping all the variables constant) one day a dive is so easy and the next you black out. I can only hope it was the hyperventilation, because at least I know what not to do next time. I just dont want to accept that it may happen randomly, or due to factors that I cannot predict or control because that would be the end of my deep freediving.
Photos: Daan Verhoeven
Location: Larnaca, Cyprus, Freedom Depth Games Competition (if you can deal with thermoclines it’s an amazing place to train and compete!)
