9 Sept 2007 - Open Water Long Distance

Its a pity we did not send a team to the World Championships last month. I was hoping to do a long distance open water. I completed the 300m in Australia in 34 mins and so wanted to see how I fared in the 6000m....thats a long way.

We have an open water national championships coming up at the end of the month in Wraysbury and the longest distance will be 6000m. ......so here goes.

Ive been down a couple of times to check out the water temperature and ---- well its a bit cold at first but as long as you keep moving its ok. And it really helps if its sunny. Off to try and get used to the water temp again later today....

Ive also been doing some more running to strengthen up the ankles a bit. There is a lovely park near us with a slight hill and Ive been getting to the point (before the holidays took there toll) of being able to sustain a HR of over 160 for the whole run circuit (or 2 circuits sometimes).

Underwater Orienteering

Time I updated this.. Over recent weeks I have been training in SCUBA and orienteering to start up underwater orienteering in the UK. This used to be quite popular in the 70's but seems to have died out. Ive had some great input from Gunnar Mobius and various websites from Germany, France and Czech.

Basically, underwater orienteering is swimming round a course underwater against the clock. All the rules are posted on the CMAs website.

I got a bit carried away with the SCUBA side. Originally I only intended to do the open water and navigation courses, but the thought of holidays looming up encouraged me to continue and so Ive now done some more specialisms and a rescue course and weel on my way to being a Master Scuba Diver.

Ive arranged the first proper underwater orienteering competition to take place at the end of this month at Wraysbury - which is ideal for this type of event. So far the uptake has been slow but hopefully will get a bit more interest as word gets around.

So I have the buoys, orieteering clippers and everything is all set for 30th Sept.

Ive also built the only monofin style rig in the UK to take part in some overseas competitions and found a great way to measure underwater distance.