What goes through my mind on a deep dive?

I submerge my face in the water and start the descent, focusing on how the water feels as it streams past the areas left uncovered by my wetsuit, like my hands and face.

Continuning down, I hear the first alarm set on my watch, at 22 meters. I start filling up my mouth with air from my lungs, so that I can carry it down with me to equalise my ears.

I stop kicking, and start freefalling, letting gravity pull me down.

Here, my eyelids relax and fall partly closed. I hook my thumbs onto the straps on my thighs and focus on relaxing my chest area.

I focus on keeping myself positioned so I can freefall comfortably and fast.

At around 40-50 meters, I sometimes get small pressure contractions in my diaphragm, but then I think about my friend Max and that he was able to go down to 106 meters with these contractions, and so I continue.

The deeper I go, the further my eyes close, relaxing more and more for every meter.

I see that the water turninig darker and I think about how quiet it is down here.

I feel that the water is getting colder, and I sense it streaming by on my hands and face.

It’s getting even darker and I keep closing my eyes little by little the deeper I go, until they are almost fully closed.

I focus on what I can see, some small particles in the water passing by, little bright dots in the dark water. I’m passing by these dots faster and faster, and soon I reach my maximum freefall speed, 1.1 meter per second, or 4 km/h.

I feel that the volume of air in my mouth is getting smaller, compressed, and I shift my focus towards my mouth, so as to keep equalising my ears. I hear my ears making a popping sound with every equalisation I do, and I know that I can continue down.

I hear the second alarm on my watch, set at 10 meters before the target, at which point I equalise and know that I will reach the aimed at depth!

I feel the line passing by my fingers now until I reach the tennis ball at the end of the line. I turn and start the ascent!

Here I count the kicks, deciding that I will count to 24 kicks, and then start over again.

I put my arms over my head for better stream-lining, and keep counting throughout the whole way up. During this time, I only think about counting.

I then meet the safety diver, and realise that I can now slow down the kicks and let the buoyancy take me to the surface.

Before I know it, I reach the surface and fill my lungs up with fresh air again!