Competition build-up - National champs

Ok, now it's time to put all the new tricks into action for next Sunday's national champs. I've announced 135m for DYN and 80m for DNF. This competition will be the official qualification event for our national team (max 3 athletes per discipline provided that they exceed 135m in DYN or 102m in DNF). There are several divers capable of reaching those minimum limits, so I'll need to go well beyond those to secure my place in the team. As some US-divers like to put it: 'Failure is not an option'.

The preparation this week has been less than perfect: the working days have been 12-16h and I haven't been training at all. I did my last aerobic training last Sunday (hard 50min spinning), and I'll be doing only some light gym workout, stretching or diving every day from today until Saturday morning.

The plan I've set myself for the competition day is more or less the following

• We'll go to Kouvola the previous day, so there is no hurry in getting to the pool in time
• I'll get up at around 8-8:30 to do some light stretching
  
• I'll eat more or less a normal breakfast at 09:00 and drink some mineral water after that (my OT:s are at 14 and at 15:50)
• I'll do some stretching on the pool and try to mentally go through the phases of the dive as many times as possible
• For warm-ups I'll do some e-diving and some very easy dynamics (max 80m and 55m)
• I'll have 7-10 min break from warm-up dives before the OT
• In DYN my targeted range is 20-45 kicks over 100m mark. 15 kicks is about 25m, so 20 kicks should take me to 135m, and 45 kicks is somewhere around 175m mark.
• In DNF my targeted range is 10-15 hand strokes past 50m mark. This accounts for 100m+turn to 125m+turn in distance. I set my AP lower (80m) because I didn't know the rest period between the two dynamics, and if I'll end up going to a max-max dive in DYN it WILL have an impact on the other dives of the day. 80m should be achievable even if I went to lactic acids at 40m mark.

The biggest risks that I fear are getting the fever back that's been bugging me during the last month and upsetting my stomach. I try to keep out of cold and avoid disrupting my eating habits until Sunday.

Urea iacta est.