Ice swimmer travels under sheet in cold plunge

Mentally very challenging, but also very rewarding

My name is Olavi Paananen. I am attempting to break the record of longest swim under ice

breath held, no fins, no diving suit. I put my nose clip on and it's like, okay, let's just do this

The beginning of the dive felt surprisingly easy. I've been pre-diving for seven years as a part of Finnish national team

However, this cold training started only seven months ago. I was pre-diving under ice with diving suit quite a lot last winter

And I thought on a good day I might be able to do this record. And I'm not getting any younger anymore

Okay, here we have 20 meter mark. The first switch to safety divers

There's only very small error margins. So if something happens, I know that I cannot do a lot

of corrections. Otherwise, I can't make the dive. So everything had to work perfectly

We have the 40 meter mark here. Generally, I try to break down bigger goals in smaller pieces

60 meter mark I remember thinking also that 60 meters is easy I already more than halfway You have to have these mental tricks to be able to overcome this And after this I get signs per 10 meters Distance is so short

that I didn't really count anymore. I just was thinking about the end result and I will succeed

in this. One important thing is to focus on routine rather than training hard. Routine will

always outperform training hard. On this dive after 100 meters I felt that I really should get

up now. I feel very hypoxic. If this would be a pool dive I would come up now but there is still

some ice so I have to go a few meters more. That was the hardest part. I just tried to go and

finally it was a successful dive but it was very close. Well, the actual attempt went very smoothly

On that day, I could not have done any more meters. I finished it just barely

Very, very intense situation, but I managed to do it. I'm very happy for that

My successful record distance was 107 meters. I don't know about future

Let's see. Don't promise anything