A day out of the water for me. I kept blowing blood out of my nose last night and still this morning. I was packing up my bag to go to the blue, including in it my suit and weights hoping somewhere in the back of my mind that I could do just one dive today. I walked over to the sink and blow blood out of my nose one more time and I knew that the temptation of the blue hole was too much for me, so I stayed home and held my breath instead.

Has anyone ever given themselves hiccups from breath holds? I got a major case of them today so I did some research. I found out that hiccups are caused by an irritation to the diaphragm. This can be cause by eating too much or too quickly, getting scared or holding your breath.

" When the diaphragm is irritated, it pulls down in a jerky way, which makes you suck air into your throat suddenly. When the air rushing in hits your voice box, you're left with a big hiccup.'

I found hundreds of solutions to this, but what worked for me was when I shoveled a nice scoop of porridge into my mouth.

Maybe thinking about the 3rd Mediterranean World Cup might have also cured my hiccups. I confirmed yesterday and send in my deposit. Next I will book my plane tickets. I am so excited about going. Check out the promotional video in the link below.

I have to say that it is never a good dive when I see blood, it means that I have hurt myself, and this year my goal was to dive without blood. I will be descriptive about body fluids in this blog, so consider this your warning if that makes you uncomfortable, stop reading.

Blood is one substance that a freediver does not want to see, but like many others before me, what do you you do when you spit blood, for whatever reason, and there is a competition approaching or you only have one week to train in your tropical destination? Last year I would take a day or two off then I was back to it, usually seeing blood again soon.

There are no medical studies that I am aware of about the long term effects of lung, throat or sinus squeeze. Usually after a bad squeeze I would go to the doctor and get checked out, always to find the same result, no problems. That is reassuring, but I know a squeeze is not good.

This year my focus has been to dive without blood. I am less concerned with the depths I am reaching and more focused on being relaxed and comfortable during my dive. The absence of this is the reason I believe that I squeeze myself and ultimately spit blood.

So far my time in the water this trip in Egypt has been relatively useless. My last couple days I have not been past 20M, and even 20 was difficult to get to. I think I was equalizing ever .25M. Today I decided to skip the blue hole, do some breath holds in the morning and then go to light house in the afternoon and play with my equalization on the 10M line.

My morning went great, after about 5 warm up holds, I was feeling much more comfortable with static again. I have not trained static with April 2009 so lately when I have tried to hold my breath I could not break 3 mins, 3:15 on a good day. This is a pretty sad number, especially when I have rock star Canadian women like Julie Bisaillon repeatedly doing 6:53.

I know my static is terrible, it really always has been, but I think if I train it, hard for 1 month then I will be back to an acceptable number again, closer to 5 mins, however I would like to get to 6 mins, that is my goal. Anyway today I did a 4 minute hold and it was much easier then I anticipated. I was surprised when I looked at my stop watch and it was already 3:30. I love those days. I was doing dry statics on my bed, anyway I think my breakthrough came because I changed my breathing and it made my contractions come much later.

It's 5pm and I am finally in my suit ready to go into the water. I head out and start doing pull downs. I start with inhales, then I do a few FRC's. After my 7th pull down I blow my nose and I am amazed my snot was bright orange. Lol I am thinking to myself, WTF, why is my snot this color, clear, yellow, green, these colors I have seem before, but orange, weird. I continue with a few more pull downs and then I decide to do a few CNF to 10M. My plan is to try out my newly repaired 1.5mm suit tomorrow and see how I am doing with this discipline since the Bahamas.

After a few dives I return to the surface feeling good, blow my nose and what do I see? Blood.... Ok diving is now over, back to the shore for some shame, how did I possibly squeeze myself with 10M. Well my sinus have been bugging me this whole trip and I have been trying, pushing them a little to do my will. But as demonstrated in a not so nice way, my will doesn't work.

I was asking Alexey about my orange snot and how unusual it was and he said no it has happened to you before, remember when you spit orange stuff, that is old blood. That makes sense old blood, from other dive attempts. However for the record this was the first time it was from my sinuses.

My mood was a little sour for a bit. I rinsed my sinuses and gave myself a loving massage, then I was off to dinner for some steak, very good recovery food and back home for a call to one of my best friends. Brandon and I talked until I felt better, then a very nice surprise after and I was set. A perfect day, filled with ups and downs.

My diving in Dahab has not been going well at all. Despite my best efforts to clear up my sinuses. This thing I picked up is running it's course, and making diving very uncomfortable. I am finding it painful to have my head in the water at 2M, I am able to equalize my sinuses and get farther, but I am uncomfortable. Since my resolution this year was to enjoy my deep diving, this is really contradicting it.

I have two days left here now, so I think I will focus on sitting on the beach and hopefully I will get some yoga too. I need to prepare for my time in LA where I love to take Yoga classes.

Being sick is not motivating for me to blog, so I wishing you all good health and plenty of rest.

I am very happy to report that my training is going well, despite my sinuses, although today they were much better. No pain leaving the surface and just slight irritation past 25M. I was pleasantly surprised to do a free immersion to 41M. I was very relaxed and stopped because I could not equalize any more.

I will rest from diving tomorrow because I have been diving very deep for me considering I have been away from deep diving for a while. So far all good no lung squeeze.

After my FIM dive I did a tester CNF in my 3mm suit with 4kg. I dove very easily to 21M, it was surprisingly pleasant. I think my pool training was beneficial.

The tragedy of flying is getting on the plane feeling healthy, then getting off the plane feeling and within 24 hours you feel the germs overtaking your body. Ok well I speak for myself here, usually it is my sinuses that fall victim to airplane sickness. I will also preface this by saying when I get onto an airplane after eating well and getting enough rest, I do not have problems. However when I get 5 hours of sleep for a few nights and replace meals with snickers bars, together make a recipe for disaster.

Today was my first day diving in Egypt. I started the day by safety Alexey doing statics on his last hold he was hanging at about 4M. My first attempt to join his depth I felt like my sinuses were going to explode, so I turned around and my mind began to race. What do I do? I certainly did not expect not being able to make it down to 4M!

I tried again and I was able to equalize the pain away after 3M, then I was completely fine. We swam out to join the others and I did a couple free immersion dives down to 36M. They took a long time, but everything else in my body felt very nice.