One more day until registration, what should I announce? What will my competitors be announcing? Does it matter? These are question many athletes will be thinking over in the next couple of days. Some divers are here to dive for themselves, to add to their personal bests, some are here defending titles, some are here diving for sponsors and media attention, we all have our reasons.

I have to say that I am feeling very grateful for having a lot of time here to prepare, things have not gone the way I would have liked them to go most of the time, but with the competition beginning in two days I feel that I have done the best that I can do. I feel ready. I learned a valuable lesson at the last championships about pushing too hard and I plan on doing dives that I feel very comfortable with, will those be enough to make the finals? Honestly I am not sure, I do not know much about my competitors, but I do know my personal struggles and myself.

Depth disciplines are interesting because there are no surprises, if all of the competitors make their depths you can see the winners from the day before. Of course things don’t always go as planned, which can make things very scary or exciting.

Yesterday I took a rest day, I will dive tomorrow, then one more day of rest, then it is time. Until then enjoy the sunsest!

It is pretty unbelievable that I have already been here for ten days, where does the time go?

I travel a lot so usually when I arrive in a new place it takes me a few days before I feel settled and relaxed. When I arrived on Long Island I was initially disappointed with the room that I had rented. It was suppose to have a kitchen, necessary really because I am here for a month and it only had a very small fridge. I chose not to worry about it, because I knew something great would come up and “Rowdy Boys” happens to have some of the best fish burgers and fries on this planet. After a few days I moved into a beautiful, big house that is very quiet and peaceful.

Initially there were not many divers on the island, Alexey and I thought we would pick a not so popular time of day to dive, the morning. Things can get pretty hectic on the lines here after 10:30am until the mid afternoon. 10:30 is Will Trubridge’s time slot, and with Rob, Johan and Herbert diving after that so there is really no other times to dive except in the late afternoon or the morning. Diving in the late afternoon makes the rest of the day useless, although after my morning dive, lunch and a nap the sun has usually gone down.

When Guillaume, Ryuzo , Kathryn and Chris discovered we were diving in the morning they all decided to join us. Suddenly our not so popular slot has become the most popular time of the day. The majority of the French team arrived yesterday and now there is around 10 of us on the platform from 9:20 to 10:40am. In a way all of these people on the platform feels like diving in competition, another good way to prepare.

Long Island is known for being a very slow island with not a lot to do. But with all of the diving I have been doing, plus land training and a few dinners with friends the days are fading away very fast.

More people will be arriving everyday now and the atmosphere will continue to change and become more exciting. Hopefully days will continue to be filled with great dives and wonderful friends.

The biggest battle I have been fighting here has been with the sand flies aka no see ums. These nasty little bugs make you feel grateful for mosquitoes. After 2 nights of stormy rainy weather I was covered in about 200 very itchy bites. I would be waking up in the middle of the night scratching my legs very hard. If you are coming here start taking vitamin B1 NOW! The only person who has not been badly bitten is Ryuzo and he normally takes this vitamin. I have been trying all sorts of experimental treatments that I found on the internet and I am able to sleep through the night now.


This is Guana Cay, one of my favorite places on the island.

Diving has been going well, then not so well, then a few days ago it started to feel good again. My head likes to play funny games with my body. The first few days I put no pressure on myself at all to do any deep dives and things were feeling wonderful, I was comfortable at depth and I was doing deeper dives in training then I have done since February.
That made me feel fantastic and very confident about my abilities for this upcoming competition. As some of you may know I typically change my favorite disciplines after I set a record. While I am training I can be very motivated by the challenge to do things that I did not think were possible for me to accomplish. Usually after I have reached my goal I need a mental break and so I change my focus to another discipline.

I think it is also common knowledge that I am not a big fan of CWT, simply because I have problems relaxing at depth and therefore I cannot equalize. This is a common in most beginners and during CWT I find humility. I am not challenged by lactic build up or by hypoxia, but this is where my head comes in and creates a limit for me. Anyway this is my very long way of starting my story that in the beginning of this trip I was loving CWT! It was feeling easy, very nice and I was equalizing much deeper than I usually do. Of course my ego loves this, and my head is off to the races about what I will do in the competition and how easy it will be to dive deeper. I am thinking the next dive will be great, when I try to go deeper then my other training dives, what happens? I can’t equalize, hmmm expectations ruin everything, thus is life and definitely not a new lesson.

I believe that if I had an opportunity to train CWT without the pressure of an upcoming competition that I would do much better in that discipline, but for now being new to the sport and having had great results in many other disciplines, I am okay with laying my goal of achieving records in CWT to rest until I am more experienced, I have a lot of time and much still to learn.



The competition is approaching very quickly and so now I must focus and prepare myself for CNF. I did my first CNF on day three to 30M and it was so hard. This is how CNF feels if you have not done it in a while. I got a few suggestions from Kerian about a better way for me to train and I have had two successful CNF days in a row and tomorrow I will take my 2nd day off since I got here.

My body has been feeling very stiff recently. My plan is to begin practicing yoga again, also being more diligent about stretching in the morning before the dive. I am not a morning person and the idea of getting out of bed, without food or coffee in the morning is not something I would do for anything other then diving. The last two days I have stretched and I have had very nice feelings during my dives so stretching does me well.

A little late I know, but better late then never. I was actually getting ready to write this blog a few weeks ago with the main subject being 3 times Egypt and no Egyptian tummy, well that thought was unexpectedly demolished by getting sick. I am not sure what caused it, whether it was something I ate or if it was the extremely still Red Sea. Many of my fellow divers got sick as well. The lack of current, although beautiful to look at this sea of glass, made to lack of government infrastructure very apparent when surfacing from a dive you had to swim past a sea of trash.

Okay I’m jumping way a head; let me start from the beginning. After the world championships in Denmark I had 5 different planes to take and a very long time before I arrived in Sharm el Sheik. As soon as I walked in my friend Deb’s front door, put down my stuff, she told me to grab my gear because we were going diving!
Five minutes later with my bikini on, gear on my back and trying to cover myself appropriately to respect the locals during their Ramadan fast, we were off. To be truthful all that I wanted to do was sleep, and after a great lunch on a beautiful boat I had a nice cat nap before some beautiful afternoon diving.
Originally I was planning on heading down to Dahab after a few days, but I was having so much fun in Sharm that I delayed my departure for almost a week and I could delay no longer. I was recreationally diving almost daily in Sharm, but I knew that if I was planning to dive deeper then 30M in the competition that I had better get to Dahab and dive on the line.
Originally my plan with the triple depth competition was to just have a very relaxing, easy comp without any pressure. This year triple depth decided to have a team component to the competition and Alexey Molchanov had asked me to be on his team. Ok so now the pressure to perform was on. Alexey and I arrived in Dahab and we needed to find another teammate. At dinner my suppose to be roommate Kathryn McPhee was also looking for a team, so it was settled. I had three days of training on the line before the competition was to start.
I was training mostly with Alexey. I have to say that compared to him, I don’t train at all. I realize that I am relatively new to the sport but my typical deep training day would consist of stretching in the morning, a couple of warm up hangs at 15m then a target dive. Over the three days I did more training dive then I would typically do in a few weeks!
After training and finishing lunch on the first day, we went for a swim to, then some fun no fins dives going under a swim through at 25M and then a little diving with some scuba divers around 20M. I think the first day I must have done at least 15 dives, and the other days were much of the same.
The first day of competition was static. I hate static! I admire people that can lie down in the water and play dead for minutes at a time and enjoy it. I haven’t come to that place yet, maybe one day. I had no motivation for the pain that day and after two warm up hold of 3 mins and 3:40, I pulled off an amazing 2:40 as my target. Good thing static didn’t count for points towards the main competition. My team mates had nice easy holds and afterwards we came up with our team name. We had been going back and forth about what to call ourselves. There was a mention of something Kiwi and something else Russia and during an afternoon Yoga session and Tiramisu lunch we decided: Sexy, Flexy, Mulha Bandha. I will let you decide who you think each name applies to since we had a few friendly battles over it ourselves.

Day 1: Free Immersion: I had announced 51M, somewhere around 40M I missed my equalization and being the warrior that I am I road it out to the plate and came up clean with the tag and a little sinus squeeze. Kathryn had a clean dive to 55M and Alexey did a ridiculously easy 90M.
Day 2: Constant weight: I announced 55M, thinking that was a conservative and should be nice to my sinuses. I got the tag, returned to the surface, pulling off my nose clip just before and the first thing I hear out of Lotta’s mouth after I say okay is “YOUR BLEEDING” Sinus squeeze day 2 a little worse. What to do? I have no options for rest before CNF the next day and being my strongest depth discipline I wanted to take back the Pan American record but that was two days in a row of a sinus squeeze.
Day 3: Constant No Fins: I announced 53M, the deepest announcement for a woman. A lot was riding on this day for the team competition, if the three of us had clean dives or small penalties we were for sure going to win. Kathryn had a successful dive as did I and Alexey did an easy 75M, but he got a penalty for still holding onto the line when his airway entered to water. I was very happy to have completed my dive, my sinuses had taken a beating this competition and it was time for a rest.
A rest for a few hours anyway, I was heading back home late that night. Surprisingly I ended up placing third overall for women. Another surprise was our team won free entry into next years competition. Things that are free always make me smile, especially when they are useful.
A long journey back home, which always seems to feel like a bit of a war zone when I have been away for a while. Too much to do in too little time, what better to do then wake up on a Friday morning and book a ticket back to Egypt for that afternoon? Ha ha maybe one of my crazier moments but I had 6 days to kill before I had guests arriving so a little vacation is good for a recharge and maintaining my constant state of jet leg.
That brings me to the third time Egypt, serious training for the world championships. I had a wonderful trip, besides the small visit to the hospital, but overall I felt great, the diving was great and I have to say that Egypt is a very nice place to train.
Today I arrived in Nassua, Bahamas and I will spend one night here before I head to Long Island and become reacquainted with the Dean’s Blue Hole and island lifestyle. There are three things that Egypt and the Bahamas have in common; spectacular diving, nice weather and crappy Internet!

Wow, what an amazing competition. Everything was wonderful, the camaraderie, the organization, the steady flow of healthy and yummy food, multiple national and world records being set, laughter, CMAS, friends, and the after party. Of course there is also my personal achievement of setting a new Pan American record in dynamic at 181M, but to share in that with me was the legend Carlos Costa from Venezuela setting a new Pan American record in dynamic with a swim to 215M.



There were many swims with honorable mentions, to start Suzy Osler from New Zealand, she was the second woman in the world to swim 200M with a fin, taking a silver medal in the final. There were so many men who swam over 200M that I lost count. Maria Livbjerg from Denmark had a very easy swim in no fins to 147M also taking a silver medal. Natalia Molchanova from Russia made a clean sweep of gold medals in all disciplines, setting two new world records in the process. Kathryn McPhee also placed in all three categories, taking home silver in static and bronze in both dynamic disciplines. Jessica Wilson from the US took home bronze in static.
Guy Brew, who is also a Kiwi, took home two Gold medals in static and dynamic. This was Guy’s first international competition and I think we could all take a lesson in handling nerves from him. Bijarte Nygard from Norway took gold for the men in dynamic no fins with a swim to 199M, very far ahead of the rest of the pack, followed by Martin Petrisko from Czech Republic at 182M and Mikko Pontinen from Finland at 181M. All of these men fought hard on the surface and pulled through to get white cards, William Trubridge finishing a close 4th at 174M. The dynamic final for the men was an exciting race from the qualifying heats to finishing final. The top three athletes in this category were all over 219M. Frederic Sessa from France led the pack with a strong fast swim to 228M, he was turining at 150M when the rest of the pack was approaching the 100M turn, this performance got him a silver medal, followed by Katsuya Hamazaki from Japan @ 219M, Weine Gutavsson from Sweden finishing fourth with a strong performance. The men’s static category finished much as predicted with Alexey Molchanov taking silver and Ulf Dextegen from Sweden taking Bronze.
Amongst all of the excitement from the medalist there were so many more personal glories being celebrated all over the pool, from personal best to records. Maria Hovden from Norway a new diver ended up placing 3rd in the woman’s B final in static with a personal best hold of 5:22. This could mean that next year we will see a strong Norwegian woman’s team with Maria and Elizabeth Kristoffersen. Elizabeth had a great competition going well over 20M beyond anything she has done in training in the dynamic final, finishing in fourth place. Georgina Miller from the UK set a new static record in the qualifying heats. Lotta Erikson from Sweden had a strong competition making the finals in static and dynamic. My favorite up and coming freediver, Nanna Krutamann adding 60M to her personal best in Dynamic, putting her in the ranking for the top 16 women in the world in this discipline.
There were also disappointments such as athletes finishing a strong performance but doing the surface protocol to the wrong side of the pool and the red cards that so many athletes saw. Red cards were common at this championships which could have been for many reasons, nerves, athletes pushing beyond their personal limits, athletes not used to surfacing on a lane rope, fatigue, tougher judging, the list can go on and on.
Something new and wonderful that happened this year, Sebastian Naslund from Sweden was the official announcer. For all events he introduced the athletes, talked about the sport, specific performances, competition favorites and more, thus turning our sport, which to the uneducated spectator is hard to watch or understand, and making it entertaining. Personally I think it would be lovely if we were to have an announcer at every freediving competition, if we did maybe we would start to have a bigger audience, and a greater global acceptance of the activity many of us spend most of our free time doing.
Another aspect of the competition that I appreciated was the Russians beautiful helper Katerina. I first noticed her at the parade through town, dressed like a Russian doll marching through the streets in 6” heels. Then every day she was at the pool with Natalia and Alexey. Katerina would be in full make up, looking nice in shiny clothing, helping get them ready for their performances and the best part carrying their gear in heels. Again I am thinking about the growth of Freediving as a whole here, if we all had a beautiful blonde helper, it may bring more spectators, so be on the lookout. ☺
I must say a special thank you to my brother Jordan Strain for coming with me to the pool and being my coach and safety in the early mornings at 7am. To Kerian Hibbs for watching over me, being my coach on the lines, giving me kind words of encouragement and tips to take home and work with. And finally to Darrell Cottle who came to the Championships with Kerian as a guest and made all of my flat mates lives easier. Darrell carried gear and weights on the journey to and from the pool.
The end of world championships finishes with a fantastic party. After all of the healthy living, restricted diets, bed times, and other restraints that most freedivers put on before a competition, we are ready to blow off some steam. We meet each other on the dance floor and inevitably many us end up in the pool, in Aarhus many freedivers made their way up to the 10M platform for a midnight jump into the blue.
Personally I saw two red cards and one white card at this event, despite the ratio I am not disappointed. I know that I went to the competition and I did my best, representing my country and proving to be amongst the top female athletes in the world. Whether my body, my brain or my breath hold was the problem with my performances I am not sure, now I have some time to figure it out my personal lessons.
As most of you know I am a fairly new diver and I’m still working out things in training. At the competition I learned that I still have a long way to go. I am excited to get back home where I will try some new methods in training and I can focus on my journey into myself through freediving. Freediving is hard work, it takes dedication, “the ability to endure suffering” as Grant Graves always says, an open mind, belief in yourself to achieve what seems impossible in the beginning, freedom and much more.
The beautiful thing is that when you ask a many professional athletes what Freediving is for them, and how they train, you will likely get many different answers. Some athletes train targets, some train none at all, doing maxes only in competition. The bottom line when you speak to any top athlete is THEY TRAIN, and they train hard. If you want to be one of the top divers in the world, it is within your reach, just get wet and train.

Aarhus Denmark
Today I am competing in my first event, dynamic no fins. I announced 103M, I compete at 5pm. The pool is really smooth. I arrived in Denmark a few days ago and last night the jet lag really hit. I’m listening to “Bring me your love” album by City and Colour, getting my Canadian content in, as my brother would say.
I have spent the last 5 weeks training in the mountains in Canada. I am a little nervous about today, but at the same time I am excited. I haven’t done a real target swim since April. Besides my nerves about competition this is the biggest freediving competition EVER, with over 200 athletes! So needless to say I have been reconnecting with many distant friends that I only see at competitions.