The Later Volumes of Freediving
Posted By Paul Kotik on 21 November 2004
At the pool, I noticed that Zax looked mighty pale. He’s usually a pretty nut-brown, tropical-looking fellow, but now he looks like Stilton cheese. Transparent skin. I checked out the insides of his eyelids, usually an scarlet, iron-rich meat: pasty pale. Palms, too. The effort of changing out of his street clothes and into his wet suit had him breathing hard – and this is a guy who normally runs hills for light relaxation.
We decided to check him out with a series of dry statics, poolside. Now, Zax is not a competitor and never trains for freediving except by freediving – or didn’t, until he launched this bizarre anemia project. In any case, he assured me as he lay down on his back that he’d benchmarked himself before starting the drug regimen and had pulled a clean 6:20 after warm-ups of 3:30 and 4:30.
He did a 5-minute vent, then sucked and held. He lasted a little over a minute.
“That’s not too encouraging,” I suggested. “ Maybe this isn’t such a great idea.”
“I forgot.” he insisted, “That’s all. I forgot what I was doing. Again.”
Another 5-minute vent, suck and hold. Better – he finished his 3:30 with no visible signs of distress, although I thought for a while during the hold that he’d somehow managed to doze off with his tongue magically locking his airway closed. We exchanged a few words, then Zax said he wanted to rest up before doing his 4:30 and his go-for-it. I got up and went for a squirt.
When I returned, Zax was snoring.
A few minutes later, one eye suddenly popped open.
"Get in the water," he ordered.
With considerable apprehension I joined Zax in the chest-deep water at the head of a 25-meter lap lane.
“Usually, I do a 100 –meter dynamic, no fins.” He mumbled. “ Given the statics I just did, I might be able to do that now.”
Uh-oh. Ahem…..
“Zax, you did a minute, a 3:30 and then you fell asleep.” I asserted.
He paused, figuring, puzzling, then shrugged it off.
"Spot me !” he said, and started his breathe-up.
Me, I clutched the kickboard and bet myself Zax wouldn’t even reach the end of the lane, 25 meters away. In the locker room he looked worse off than the octogenarians who hung out there forgetting to go home. He shuffled rather than walked, and his normally heroic posture was now all hunched over and saggy. If I didn’t know this was all the temporary effect of his zany drug experiment, I’d have pegged him as a goner.
Zax stood in the warm water, eyes closed, belly swelling to suck in the air he then slowly pushed out over pursed lips. As I watched, a transformation came over him. He slowly became himself again. Of course. Zax is a waterman, an aquatic creature.
He was home.
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