Jorg's Brain Log

The day after the big challenge was a real rest day! My legs and body hurted so much from the run at the mountain, we decided to keep it easy and just enjoy the sun, the pool and some books. It’s amazing how much I’ve read during this small vacation. 4 books, around 1300 pages, that’s about 200 pages a day. Nice. I feel smart again.

Yesterday we arrived at Kos Airport, and I think it was the biggest mess I’ve ever seen at an airport. From the bus to check-in was around 1:15 hour! Vacansoleil, our travel company, completly messed thhis up. The tour  leaders were just a bunch of sheep, talking to each other. Well, you can’t expect too much from a few 18-20 year old girls, who are trying to have a work vacation for themselves.

It’s easy to loose temper in such mess at an airport. All the waiting lines can make you go crazy! And the problem is, that you don’t have anything to look forward too as well, because you’re flying home instead to vacation. Oh well, breath in, breath out!

All in all I was very glad with this holiday, which I got as a gift from my girlfriend! I was very glad that we were situated outside Kos city. While there were way too many dutch people walking around and too little freediving in the sea, we had a good hotel with good food, a nice room, good weather and each other. So mission accomplished!

Not the way how I would treat a dog in 40 degrees sun!

We’ve been taking it very easy the last 2 days. Lot of sun bathing and reading. Just finished 3 books, around 1000 pages already and still got 1 book to go.

Yesterday was an interesting day. After the bike ride up the hill I’ve set my mind to climbing the big mountain behind our hotel. Helle was not so interested! So I put on my running gear and took a bottle of water, camera and watch and told Helle that if I would not be back at 20:00 to call the National Guard!

At 17:55 I left the hotel for the big run. But after 10 meters I decided to spare the energy and walk up and run down. The sun was still shining very hard, so I had to take it easy with only half a liter of water. After 40 minutes of steep walking up the only person I encountered was an old lady of around 140 years old, who apparently never sees anyone at that point of the mountain. When the dogs started barking she looked at me and immediately locked her house. I’ve got to work on my people skills.

It’s very strange how the top of a mountain can seem so nearby and be so far away in reality! So I told to myself to walk until 19:00 hours so I had another hour to go back down! And of course at 19:00 hours I thought I was almost there and walked a little bit further. After 5 minutes of walking I came at a stop. I reached a sign that said very clearly not to go further and not to take pictures. Before getting some angry Greek Soldier pointing stuff at me I decided it was best to stop at this point.

View from the top! See the small boats in the harbor.

After 1 hour and 10 minutes of walking upwards I was pretty tired. So I took a small 5 minute break at the top, drank some water, took my Shoes off, and looked at my watch. It was already 19:10 and had only 50 minutes to get back. Of course the way down would be a lot easier! So I ran down, but noticed pretty soon that with 110 kilo’s on your body that going down goes very easy! So easy in fact I had to turn on the brakes all the time. So constant pressure on my quadriceps, calves, my whole body.

After 10 minutes I was so exhausted, I thought of walking again. But I’ve learned from myself that when I stop running, it is very hard to start again. So I decided to hold on and continue. I ran down without any stops in 35 minutes, which was half the time to get up, and it was one of the most heaviest things I have ever done! I dropped in the hotel room pretty exhausted and drank a few liters of water and took a very cold shower.

Afterwards it was already dinner time. And after dinner we went to the city, but I was so tired it didn’t take long before I was in bed again. The next morning I had muscle pain everywhere! I almost couldn’t walk down the stairs to the restaurant and tripped a few times. So today was a very very easy day, with some light swimming to get my legs going again. Why am I doing things like this again?

The hotel has a great service. For 5 euro they bring you to the harbor were you can enjoy a nice boat trip including drinks and food and in the end of the day they bring you back as well. So we decided to go and try this little trip.

The boat set direction for a very small Turkish Island where it would harbor itself in the shallow waters near the shore, so that we could snorkel and swim to the island. Finally the freediving gear came out of the bag!

I jumped in the water, which was around 5 meters deep, and was pretty disappointed to see only a Sandy bottom and only very small fish. I snorkeled around and hoped for something better than this, but unfortunately this was not the case.

So the fins went back into the bag and I did some regular swimming with my goggles and swam under the boat a few times, which was the most exciting thing to do. Lunch and drinks on the boat was excellent and everybody was having a good time. I guess I’m just too spoiled with my underwater experiences, because everybody was having a good time.

The way back was went with the stream and wind, so unlike to way to the island were a lot of people got seasick, including Helle, it was much more relaxing. After 1 hour trip back we arrived at the harbor and got a transfer back to the hotel. Good day spent! It seems the only thing I will get here is a tan, and not spectacular underwater shots!

We rented some bicycles today to get a better view of the island and Kos city itself. In the city itself it was pretty busy and we had a good lunch at a beach cafe. With the hot sun on our heads we went pretty slowly on the bikes. Just watching the sea and city was a lot of fun.

On the way back to the hotel we found Kos Divers, the diving shop I was planning to do some diving with. After asking the owner of the center about the diving conditions, he asked me what certification I had. After hearing I was an instructor he said it was better not to dive here. How honest! More about my freediving, or absence about it, on the shark-bait website.

After visiting another almost empty beach bar, it was time to get back to the hotel. Our hotel is halfway a big mountain, so when we wanted to rent the bikes, the owner of the shop which was located near the sea, came to pick us up by car. We weren’t that lucky for the way back, because we had to drop our bikes off at the hotel reception. So that meant we had to cycle our way up to the hill.

I just love a challenge, and gears on a bicycle! So with a pretty high RPM and a very light gear we pedaled our way back up the mountain. Helle had a little bit more trouble with all the gears on her bike, so when we arrived at the hotel she had enough. However I wasn’t satisfied yet and wanted to continue upwards. From the hotel up, the street gets much steeper, so another challenge. But after 10 minutes of biking upwards and blood in my throat it was time to do some downhill biking, which appears not to be so fun if you can’t rely on your brakes that much.

In the end I arrived safely in the hotel again and it took me around 10 minutes in the cold shower to cool down again. That was fun!

Today we traveled from Eindhoven to Kos (Greece). Of course by airplane. And while I traveled frequently from our own Eindhoven Airport, it’s been a while! Our plane was scheduled to depart at 15:40 and we had to check –in 2 hours before that. That’s 13:40! 2 hours of doing nothing…

This time I was already glad that we didn’t lose a day by traveling to Amsterdam Airport and going to all the long rows over there. This way we still had the morning for ourselves, to do some useful and productive stuff.

The good thing is that more and more airplanes allow to check-in online beforehand. And because we flew with Transavia I already checked in the day before and arranged 2 good seats way in front of the wings, so that you’ve got less noise from the engines which a roaring to the back. I also took in mind that  we were flying south east in the afternoon, which meant that the sun would be shining on the right side of the planes. So, I selected seats on the left side, so we could leave the sunscreen on the window open.

Of course my seat was next to the aisle, so I could make optimal use of the aisle itself as leg room. One learns a few tricks if you fly a lot. After selecting the seats I printed the check-in vouchers so that we could avoid the long check-in rows at the airport itself.

Now that we already checked in, we saved ourselves 30 minutes because you have to check in your main luggage 90 minutes before departure. So our deadline to arrive at the airport was 14:10 instead of 13:40. We ordered a taxi for 13:45 and we arrived at the airport at 14:00. We dropped our baggage and the baggage drop-point, which had no people waiting and walked away from the long line of people who were waiting to check-in at counter 8.

Because of all these new stupid flying rules that say that you can’t bring your own liquids any more on the plane, we decided to sit down and drink our cans of Soda. Otherwise you would have to throw them away. What a rules! Just a commercial rule that makes you buy drinks in the airport shop and in the plane.

Until now we managed to avoid any rows of people, but customs is unavoidable in Eindhoven. No VIP treatment here! As always I removed everything, including my belt, to make sure we weren’t delayed over there by some stupid body or baggage check, but this time my shoes were the problem. After removing my shoes and putting them under the x-ray, everything was okay.

It’s clear that Eindhoven airport is not prepared for busy season! What a mess behind customs! Completely filled with people and no place to sit. And that because of the 4 planes that were going to depart in the next 2 hours. Note to Eindhoven Airport travelers: Wait as long as possible before going through customs! There is nothing to do behind customs besides a café and a shop. Just wait in front of customs and you can still get some fresh air by walking outside and have a few more shops and café’s to choose from.

After a slow walk around we found a empty table in the corner of the café. We dropped down and we had to wait. Thank god the Tour de France  was on TV! Time Trial day, so I had something interesting to watch. After 45 minutes it was boarding time. Everybody ran to make a nice new row at the gate and I always wonder why! Do people really think the plane leaves without them, or that they won’t have a seat? As always we just stay put at our table. After 15 minutes the row was gone and some last people were walking towards the gate. That was the sign to go to the gate for ourselves as well. Again avoided a row of people!

As an extra bonus, we also avoided a row entering the plane itself. Because everybody was already seated in the plane, we just could walk into the plane, but our stuff in the overhead compartments and sit down. Too bad the only row left was a lot of airplanes: the sky was very busy and we had a 20 minute delay for departing!

Avoidable Rows:

• No Traffic Jam because of traveling from Eindhoven Airport instead of Schiphol Amsterdam
• No Check-in line because of internet check-in from home
• No Gate row because of going last
• No row while entering the plane because of going last

Unavoidable Rows:

• Customs at Eindhoven

With all this new goal setting going on, everybody expects me to work my butt off for training and reaching my new goals. Well, resting is a much part of the progress of improving as hard work is.

Without rest your mind can’t come to rest and take on a new daunting task. Without rest your muscle fibers can’t heal from all the physical work they had to endure. Without rest.. well you get the picture!

Where I normally always say that 1 week of rest is enough to recuperate, fate has things turned around a little bit. My girlfriend gave me a great birthday gift by taking my on vacation to the island of Kos in Greece. So the last week of the month, starting on Thursday, I will indulge myself with an all-inclusive formula full with food, drinks, sun, reading and diving!

Which means that my rest period is a little bit langer then planned, but nothing better then to take an uphill run in the morning looking at the sun coming up from the sea!

So at the moment I’m in a little bit of warming up schedule before I start my real schedule on august 1st. I’m now doing some light running, dry and wet freediving exercises and some swimming. No weights at the moment, got a pretty intense 5 week schedule lined out when I come back, followed by an interesting body-weight only schedule.

Probably my next post will come from Greece with some nice photos to make you jealous.

Freediving… the art of breath hold diving! A great alternative way to visit an alien environment without any external support.

I’ve been freediving since 1997 when I first started with my scubadiving lessons, but missed the sportive element in it. For 7 years straight I trained and hold my breath on every occasion, until the big burnout came. Too much training, too much pushing for new personal bests. In the end I just hated training and only just wanted to enjoy myself in the deep water.

In 2008 I decided to take a year of and see if I wanted to come back into the water, and I’m glad that I took a break from it! Because now I’m in love again with the training and being underwater. So much so that I’ve taken my old goal of reaching 50 meters of depth again.

Serious training going on again. A lot of exploring and trying out. So much so that if I would write everything down here about this part alone, my blog would be too much about freediving alone. That’s why my good friend Sanne and I setup Sharkbait, so we could share our freediving experience with the rest through that website.

So if you want to know what’s going on with Jorg and his freediving, take a look here for all Jorg his posts, or go here for the full website where you can read Sanne his stories as well.

Only 363 days to go before my next birthday. So why am I already looking forward to this new countdown when my last one just finished? Because in the coming year I’m going to set some new standards for myself and I’ve set out a pretty exciting plan and some interesting goals to reach.

First I thought about keeping the list for myself, but it is much more fun to publicly list some of my goals for the coming year and look back at my next birthday on what I’ve achieved.

My list of goals is setup in some different categories like sports, health, mental, work, creativity, etc. I’ve taken the goals that are my top goals and most clear to measure. A goal like ‘eat the paleo way’ is a clear goal for me, but not really measurable. The goals below are really measurable. Either I’ve done it or reached it, or not.

• Run a marathon
• Swim 10 kilometers
• Do a triathlon
• Swim 100 meters underwater on one breath
• Dive to 50 meters depth on one breath

• Drop under 12% bodyfat

• Finish my book

Lets see how far I can go in one year and enjoy the journey towards reaching those goals as much as reaching those goals alone!

Today I turn 33 years old. Where other people always use new years day to set new goals I’ve made it my habit to use my birthday to reflect on the past, current and future of my life.

Last year was an interesting year! On a personal level I learned a lot of new stuff about life and everything involved with it. I learned about trust, respect and honesty in good and bad ways. Not all were very positive experiences, but I can say that at least it made me a better person. Experience is key!

Now my 10+ year countdown timer has stopped and now that I’ve reached the big moment in my life, it is time to continue with some new stuff. I’ve set a total of 3 new countdown timers. Again all related to my age.

The first one reaches zero in 365 days, when I turn 34 and has a physical, mental and a task focus. I talk more about these goals in the next post.

The second reaches zero when I turn 35 years, 2 years, and has a professional and financial focus. And the third countdown reaches zero in 7 years when I turn 40 in 7 years and they consists of some major goals on where I want to stand in my life at that age and time.

Some people find it difficult to set long term goals, but it appears that those same people are also afraid to dream! I’m not saying that everything I set as a goal is succesful, but it is a way to get  focus in your life. And if I look back to when I was 21 and set some goals for my 33th birtday, it is nice to see that I’ve reached 80% of them. Now I only wish I set my goals somewhat higher…

Only one week to go! 7 days and nights and then the magic number of 33 will pop-up. It’s been 2 weeks since my last personal blog and that is pretty strange, because I kept writing like crazy (around 1000 words per day), but that’s for the book I’m working on and not for public viewing yet.

So what’s going on at the moment? Well a lot, and that’s one of the reasons it has been so quiet here. But rest assured, I’m back at my blogging cycle as it was. Decisions have been made, thoughts have been thought about and I’m ready for the next big step!

Things I’m working on at the moment:

• Dyrion and the next step (which will be pretty excited and announced this week)
• Shark Sport company (Sharkbait and Shark freediving are part of this)
• Writing (I’ve made this a regular part of my lifestyle)
• Sports (to ventilate my testoterone)
• Kids and family (the most important thing in my life)
• Myself (the other most important thing in my life)

I plan to publish a post about my life and the number 7 on my birthday next week, July 13th. It wil be a pretty honest and open letter to myself, which can be read  by everyone (privacy is dead anyway). It has something to do with goals and commitments in life and as it is very personal it will be of interest to people with the same life questions and it will probably be of no interest for some other people as well.

Work hard!