“Are you sure this is safe for your lungs?” Fred asked. “How well do you understand the physiology? What are the risks?”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Nick said. “They taught us the physiology and it’s a lot less risky than driving your car to work. Statistically speaking.”
“You know he’s gonna do what he wants to do,” Belinda said, “and if he wants to kill himself and drive his mother crazy, let him do it!” Jen watched as her mother poured herself another glass. She was a nervous drinker and Jen could tell Nick’s new obsession frightened her. Later that night she took her brother aside.
“So this freediving thing, it’s something you really love to do?
“Yes,” he said. Jen smiled.
“Just…please be safe,” she said. Nick nodded. “Promise?” He nodded again. “Okay, because you know we love you.”
“I do,” he said. As they stood staring at one another in the hallway, a hungry Alexandra began wailing for her mother. Jen rolled her eyes.
“Good, I’m gonna go breast-feed now.” She hugged him tight and walked off.
Nick stayed in the dimly lit hall and watched from around the corner, as his family joked in the living room. While Jen picked up her ravenous baby and headed for privacy, he lingered, enjoying the scene. Belinda caught him staring and smiled. She’d never fully comprehend him, and was weary of trying to protect or influence him, but she loved him with every cell in her body. Nick knew that, and he cared deeply for his family, too, but he also understood that from then on he’d have to shelter them from the truth. If he was going to succeed as a competitive freediver, he was going to have to push himself and take risks they wouldn’t like or understand.
Nick returned home after Christmas and trained every possible moment—if nothing else to get that Blake Lively out of his mind as quickly as possible. He quit smoking cold turkey, and dropped his weed habit too. Alcohol was also verboten. Ted prescribed a series of diaphragm and lung stretches, which were to be done each morning. At night he performed a regimen of dry apnea walks, where after a two-minute breathe up, Nick would sit and hold his breath until the contractions rattled his ribs, which usually occurred in the second or third minute. That was his cue to stand and walk as far as he could on one breath, holding a gashed tennis ball in his hand, which he’d drop when he reached his limit. Then he’d walk back to the chair, breathe up for two more minutes, hold his breath again, pick up the tennis ball, and walk it even farther on. His apartment wasn’t big enough for apnea walks, so he did them on the street. When that got too easy, he began doing apnea lunges.
“Everything about freediving is tolerating extremes,” Ted told him during one of their early Skype sessions. “You have to tolerate low levels of oxygen, you have to tolerate high levels of CO2, and you have to tolerate high levels of lactic acid.” The lunges set fire to Nick’s quads, filling them with the cramping burn of lactic acid. All of it was painful.
There were pool workouts too. He began training two blocks away at the Metropolitan Pool, a historic brick bathhouse recently converted into one of Brooklyn’s fine public gym facilities. A classic natatorium built in the Art Deco style, it had tarnished bronze tiles that climbed toward a peaked glass roof. The pool’s grout could have used a scrub, but it was Nick’s kind of place. He would share the dressing room with old Polish men and Hasidic Jews, serious Speedo swimmers, and the elderly looking to maintain range of motion in their silvering years. He’d begin by practicing Static Apnea on the side of the pool, then dive to the bottom and lie flat below the swimmers who puttered and glided back and forth on the surface. Then he’d do one or two laps at a time on one breath. All of it worried the lifeguards, who were on alert whenever Nick turned up.
One night while he was doing an apnea walk, he came across a group of drunken students who watched him stroll, tennis ball in hand, while his diaphragm and chest heaved. He was walking over 90 meters at a time by then and was trying to get to 100 meters. “That dude is really creepy,” one of them said, loud enough for Nick to hear. Nick smiled and made the last 10 meters before hook breathing, seated on the sidewalk. He shared that story with Ted in an email, and also mentioned an interest in going for his first depth record. He’d looked it up and the American record in Constant Weight was 90 meters, held by Robert King. Nick hadn’t even passed 30 meters, but something told him that 91 was within reach.
Ted appreciated Nick’s confidence, but he also knew that breath hold alone doesn’t get a man deep. Equalizing becomes increasingly tricky the deeper one dives, and Nick had a lot to prove before Ted would take a statement like that seriously. First things first, Ted told him. Come back down to Fort Lauderdale, and finish your Level II training. Two weeks later, Nick landed in Florida.
Ted has an open-door policy for PFI alumni to join his students on open-water dives, and when Nick posted to the New York Area Freedivers forum that he was headed back to Fort Lauderdale, Meir decided to come along. They weren’t yet close, but Nick, ever frugal, wanted to share a hotel room. Meir agreed, but there was a catch; Nick would be arriving late at night and Meir, a light sleeper, insisted that he enter quietly so Meir could be rested for the dives.
When Meir woke up that morning, he found Nick sleeping in the entryway. There were two beds in the room, but he’d been so concerned about disturbing Meir that he opted to sleep on the floor, fully clothed. Meir felt like an asshole. Nick laughed it off. “I like sleeping on the floor,” he said with a yawn when he woke to a puzzled Meir peering down at him. Later that day, after a pool session, Nick was trying to figure out the Fort Lauderdale bus schedules so he could hit church the following morning.
“Nonsense,” Meir said. He hadn’t pegged Nick as religious, but growing up Orthodox Jewish imbued him with respect for those who believed. “I’d be happy to drive you to church.” Two days later, he did just that, and waited outside for Nick until the service was over.
Ted owned a thirty-five-foot boat, which he used to motor his students out to blue water from the Fort Lauderdale marina. Once clear of the shallows, Ted set a float in the drink and dropped a line from there with a weighted bottom plate, which he adjusted to their target depths. By the end of day three, Nick had no trouble tapping the plate at 40 meters. When he returned to Brooklyn he wrote about his experience on the East Coast Divers forum. His post was riddled with typos and misspellings, yet brimmed with excitement and wonder.
Hands down one of the BEST EXPERIENCES OF MY LIFE. As I drifted down in sink faze Ted’s words echoed, “If you have the proper head position you should be able to see the surface.” I tucked a bit more and the surface world revealed to me upside down was rippling with wind cresting waves rocking my buddies in its pitch and roll near the floats and here dives Ted to meet me at depth with a GoPro in one hand and his ever watchful eyes on me. And as the first time passing my previous bench mark of 30meters I could feel the weight of water really start to press in on my rib cage, again Ted’s words came to mind, “like a Pilsbury dough boy, soft.” Refering to the stomach and diaphgm, I relaxed and allowed it to be pressed in by the pressure, grouper calling up another mouth fill to equalize…From day one in his class I knew the way I would dive would never be the same and since then it has evolved in such a positive way that I couldn’t be happier with the results. I have taken Ted on as my private coach training for the last three weeks and I have seen my performances increase significantly in that time. Goals that I set day dreaming at work turn into reality when I get in the pool or ocean…
Around that same time, Nick shared his desire to chase King’s record with Meir and Kelly. Kelly was a believer, but Meir was more skeptical. He’d seen Nick dive to 40 meters, but Meir was in IT. He was more pragmatist than dreamer, and the data said that Nick would have to accumulate a lot more experience as a competitive freediver before he could snatch a record like that. It was February 2012, and the first time Nick had ever dived along a line was the previous October. Nobody, no matter their talent, c
ould get to 90 meters that fast.
One night Kelly and Meir were gossiping about Nick’s quest online. Kelly understood Meir’s point, but her intuition told her that Nick was special. If anybody could get there, he could. She suggested a wager. Lunch at Wegman’s. The next day, Meir called Nick and confessed that he had a betting interest in his record attempt. “Look man, I don’t think you’ll get there this fast,” he said, “but I’d hate myself if I didn’t do my best to help you try. From now on, I’m your training partner. Whatever you need, and whenever you need it, I’m your guy.”
By then Nick had bought a monofin and melted the foot pockets for a snug fit. He’d built his own neck weight, and he bought a custom freediving wetsuit made to measure too, but the Metropolitan Pool wouldn’t let him practice Static any longer and they insisted he only swim one length at the most on a single breath. Meir, who lived in Flatbush, knew of a pool at a Hebrew Educational Society Rec Center much deeper in Brooklyn at the end of the L train line in Canarsie. That’s where Nick trained.
Most days he’d catch an early train from the Bedford station and nestle between snoozing passengers heading home from Manhattan after their graveyard shifts. After a few stops, the L climbed out of the underground and onto elevated rails above Broadway Junction. From there it was all rooftop views of antiquated stone and brick relics, iron bridges, onion-domed Orthodox churches, and stained-glass subway stop windows. This was old Brooklyn, the way it had always been, and Nick liked watching it rumble by.
The pool was only four lanes wide but Meir and Nick were soon on a first-name basis with the lifeguards, who always let them have a lane of their own. Meir would lean on a kickboard, and safety from above as Nick did a series of breath-hold lap swims. He’d do 25 yards at a pop, then 50 and 75, with a two-minute break in between, and those were warm-ups. After that he would relax completely and try to hit 100 yards and eventually 125, on a single breath.
In between pool workouts he amped up the dry apnea work. He’d do his stretches and run through what freedivers call training tables: a series of breath holds designed to build tolerance for hypoxia and high levels of CO2. He was still doing the apnea walks and lunges, too, and he’d climb the stairs in his building while holding his breath, or go for a jog, and alternate between breathing normally and holding his breath for thirty-second intervals. Sometimes he’d push himself to a “brownout.” He wasn’t ashamed. Many a pair of underpants had been soiled on the road to freediving fame. He augmented it all with a strict alkaline diet.
Ted scheduled the work, and Nick reported back via email or Skype. Each week he would ask for more drills, hoping to increase his workload. Ted told him to relax and take his time. “I’m a competitive freediver, and I would never train that hard,” Ted told him, but Nick wouldn’t listen. He always wanted more.
At the end of March, Meir, Nick, and Ted reunited at Dean’s Blue Hole to train before heading to the Caymans. Nick showed up on the island with two bags full of dive gear, seventeen Clif Bars he’d smuggled from Craft Services at work, one shirt, and a single pair of shorts. While some found the darkness of the hole foreboding, Nick took to it without hesitation. It felt good to get out of the pool and dive deep again. It felt natural.
Between dives, Ted told him it’s an athlete’s breath hold and ability to equalize that dictate how deep he can go. Robert King’s American record in Constant Weight at 90 meters would require a three-minute active breath hold, which meant that Nick would have to work up to close to a six-minute Static to have a legitimate shot. But six-minute Static breath holds aren’t rare at the elite level, and by the time Nick landed in Long Island, he was almost there. What nobody knew—not Ted, Meir, or Nick—was whether he’d be able to equalize to such a depth. To do that he’d have to master the three-stage mouthfill, aka the Frenzel-Fattah technique, which was once taught only to experienced and elite freedivers. By 2012, it was shared far and wide by the majority of instructors to new students without hesitation. Although the prevalence of lung squeezes had started to rise at competitions as a result, sidelining competitors for a day or two, few athletes, if any, considered them life-and-death dangerous.
Ted started Nick off slowly and did his best to temper his perspective. “I’m not saying you can’t break the record, but it is a totally unreasonable expectation,” he said as they sat on the edge of the platform, staring into inky blue, watching wisps of white sand fall over the edge of the bluffs below.
“Nice pep talk. You’re supposed to be coaching me,” Nick said.
“I’m just saying it’s unreasonable,” Ted said as he lowered the plate to 50 meters. Over the next four days, Ted kept dropping the plate with every dive, and Nick kept tapping it, always pushing Ted to drop it farther than he wanted. When Ted wanted to drop the plate five meters, Nick pushed for ten. When Ted thought two or three would do, Nick asked for at least five. By the end of the trip word had started to filter to other divers around the hole that there was a new American kid in the mix who was no joke. Among those in the area were Ashley and Ren Chapman. Ashley was training for her upcoming attempt on the women’s Constant No Fins world record, and though they wouldn’t officially meet until the Cayman Islands, they noticed Nick.
Nick loved everything about Long Island. Its rustic simplicity, its wooden churches, its bathtub-warm turquoise waters, and the offshore reefs teeming with lobster. After training he’d dive for lobster, just like he did on Marathon Key. This was the life he was meant to be living, he thought. He was in his element, but he’d started to sour on Ted, confessing to Meir at their last dinner on the island that he suspected Ted might be intentionally hamstringing him. “Think about it,” Nick said, while sipping a Kalik. “He’s a competitor. He doesn’t want me to get the record because he wants it for himself.”
Ted claims he was always supportive, though he’d become alarmed by Nick’s approach. “Nick was excited. He crushed it, and I supported him,” Ted said. “I wanted him to do well, but the more time I spent with him the more I realized that he just doesn’t listen.” Ted was trying to slow Nick down, because he knew that if he didn’t have his mechanics together he might get a lung squeeze, which would limit what he could do in the Caymans. Meir squeezed in Dean’s Blue Hole, and had to stop diving because of it, so Ted’s wasn’t a remote concern. That’s why he asked Nick to repeat dives at 50, 55, and 60 meters, before he dropped the plate farther. As Kirk had always emphasized, Ted felt Nick should own each depth before making the next jump. Nick was impatient because he was a natural, and every dive only emphasized that point. He could hear his uncle’s words echo in his brain. He was born for this shit, and all he wanted was to go deeper.
Nick hit 70 meters on their last day in the hole, yet Ted still didn’t believe Nick would get the record. As depths increase, each new meter is exponentially more difficult than the last, and 21 meters was a hell of a gap to jump in just a few weeks.
Kerry Hollowell and Steve Benson were rookie freedivers when they landed on Grand Cayman in April 2012. Most people know of the Caymans as a glitzy tax shelter where the streets are tidy and the preppy droves, golf bags over their shoulders and portfolios in hand, trade stock tips over Manhattans at mega resorts or while browsing Georgetown’s exclusive boutiques. Kerry and Steve were not headed in their direction. When Kirk Krack, the brain behind Deja Blue, picked them up in his rented minivan, they skirted snooty Georgetown and headed north along the coast to low-watt West Bay, where the white sand shimmers and the sea beckons.
Kirk gushed about the beauty of the Caymans and the upcoming schedule, which included two weeks of training in the pool and the deep blue, and a full week of competition. “We have a great setup, guys. We can do depth in the morning when it’s calm and pool sessions at night. Plus, no other comp has the level of safety protocols that we have.” Kirk knew that Kerry was a doctor and Steve a physician’s assistant. “Our head of safety is John Shedd. He’s been an ER doc for twenty-five years. You can feel comfortable pushing your
limits here. What are your PBs [personal bests]?”
Kerry and Steve were giddy, if a little nervous. Deja Blue was their first competition and they’d arrived on a whim after Steve hit an incredible seven-minute breath hold during the Static portion of their intermediate freediving course they took from the Chapmans. That was a world-class breath hold, and Ashley and Ren took note. Part of building the sport is finding raw talent and flipping a new freediver from would-be hobbyist to serious competitor, which is what they were hoping to do with Steve at Deja Blue. Kerry was simply along for the ride.
Steve grew up running, hiking, and mountain biking in northern Colorado, and had been scuba diving and spearfishing for years. Kerry was new to the underwater world, but was arguably an even better athlete. She had been a track star in high school and at NC State. Both were tall, fit, competitive, and intelligent, and when Ren told them about Deja Blue and how close Steve was to the American Static record, they knew they had to give it a shot. Aside from Steve’s outrageous static number, however, their personal bests weren’t too impressive.
“I’ve got 40 meters in Constant Weight,” Steve told Kirk. “She hit 35 meters, I think.”
“We’re really new,” Kerry said, with a shy smile.
“Right, Ren told me about you two,” said Kirk as he swerved into the driveway at Coconut Bay Condos, an understated collection of townhomes and cottages, painted with pastels and surrounding a pool and Jacuzzi, right on the beach. It wasn’t fancy, and was nothing like what Kerry had imagined Grand Cayman to be, but it was perfect. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you deeper than you ever thought possible.”
One Breath Page 15
