World Record Diary -- Part X
Posted By Tanya Streeter on 3 August 2003
Friday, July 18th, 2003
Today was a total rest day. As I write this I am desperately trying to remember what we did!! I was surprised by a friend of ours from Austin who has a scuba shop "Austin Aquatics" which hosts the pool training part of my clinics. He decided that because tomorrow is his birthday, he would fly down for the record -- I was thrilled!
Some of the guys had a big night last night and only got back to Beaches as the sun was coming up.......so their day was pretty quiet! In the afternoon, some of them rallied for the official measurement of the dive rope. Sebastien Nagel and Frederic Busslinger, Official AIDA Judges, were as officious as ever with their preparation. It was a relief to see that their marks on the rope were mere centimeters off from ours, meaning a) we were as accurate as we thought we were, and b) I would have no surprises on record day going deeper or shallower than expected. We only marked 122m for the Variable Weight attempt but put marks at 35m, 40m and 45m for the Constant Weight Without Fins. At this point I need to fit in another couple of training dives to get a prerequisite depth so I can go for more than 38m, but time is ticking away and the VB is my obvious priority.
Earlier in the day I decided to take a stab at the Static Apnea record, but I made the mistake of doing it in a pool we had never trained in at a private home on the island, and at a time I have never trained at. The result was that I was hot and out of sync. And I wasn't thrilled with the NBC Dateline TV crew who, being new to this sport, didn't give me much room to breathe -- literally! My warm-up dives went so poorly that I called off the attempt before even beginning it. But I learnt that next time, if we have time, I will do it at my usual time of 7:30am in the pool I have been training with! We all agreed it was the best decision, rather than pushing myself to exhaustion for a time that would fall short of the 6 minutes 18 second minimum I would need, or pushing to a blackout again.....which now I know I can do!
In the evening the team gathered for a briefing for tomorrow's attempt. As in the past, I only stayed around for the first 5 minutes to thank them and excuse myself as I get nervous listening to them go through it all from their perspective. Instead, my mother and I went out for dinner at Caicos Café not far from Beaches. It was hard to eat dinner, but I loaded up on as much pasta as I could, knowing I would need the energy for the first shot at 122m tomorrow.
As I think I mentioned (I have explained it so many times I am losing track of who I tell.....), tomorrow's dive will be under the AIDA Record Attempt regulations and, if successful, will to all intents and purposes be a new World Record. But, officially Monday 21st is the day, as that is what the sponsors and media are expecting. Tomorrow, from my perspective, is a training dive to ensure that Monday's attempt is a success. And a back up World Record dive (assuming I do it!!) just incase on Monday the weather blows us out or the dive is called off for another reason. Or I am unsuccessful.
Whatever happens, I am ready for it to be over!
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