After a couple of amazing deep dives, COVID struck the Roatan freediving community and I was one of the lucky ones to get infected, which caused me to lose a whole week of training and at the end of it I found myself barely able to hold my breath, with only 24 hours left to the start of the Caribbean Cup.
With my body (and soul) riddled with the stupid virus I lost all my confidence and I literally dont know where I am in my ability to hold my breath and how my lungs will respond to pressure. I can’t trust my body to do correctly all the various little miracles that you need it to do during a deep dive. Yesterday I went for a training dive, put the plate at 85 and turned at 75: it felt terrible but I wasnt completely out of breath at the end of it. So for my first competition dive I announced 86 FIM hoping I would be able to get there. While this would have been a fun dive until only 10 days ago, today I had serious anxiety before the dive. My control freak personality doesnt let me “just wing it”, and with zero certainties I felt like I was standing on quicksand.
During the dive I wanted to turn at least 10 times, I dont even know how I made myself stay until the plate, but then the way up was actually quite ok, even though I felt out of breath for a while after surfacing.
I am a million miles from where I wanted to be right now and I dont have enough time to catch up, so I guess I just need to be grateful to be alive and remember that things could always be a lot worse than they are (unless you are dying that is). I’m just so bummed because I have worked so hard for the last 2 years to be in this very spot right now, and it all literally went down the toilet for simply having sat 1 minute too long next to the wrong person.
(So no, I dont feel very grateful, in fact I’m quite furious).
