405m World Record Longline

Text by Yuri

August. I have been traveling from country to country, highline to highline, friend to friend. Philipp Gesing told me about this project he wanted to do. A LONG one. 440m long to be exact and he said he even had the perfect spot. The webbing he would get from GAMBIT-slacklines, the pulley system rope from slackliner.de, and all this would take place at the end of October. It all sounded a bit silly, since my longest line so far was not even half of that (211m) and I was nowhere near ready for a line this big, mentally or physically. Stubborn me, I started training two weeks after my holiday ended (14th of September). One month to go!

Longlining is all about endurance, mentally as well as physically, controlling the weight of the line you’re walking. The heavier the line, the stronger the vibrations will be, and the heavier it will be on the core. Thus, long heavy lines can drain LOTS of energy very quickly, if you fight with the line too much. You really need to relax and not allow the vibrations to develop in the first place. The 440m would be just over 25kg so I decided to completely focus my training on this number. To assure myself of success, I decided I needed to walk a line which was at least 3kg heavier, so I asked Jonas to use his 150m piece of heavy Black & White to double up with mine. Once I had this, it was time to train heavy!

Being 10kg heavier than the heaviest line I ever tried, I thought I had no chance. Weirdly enough I walked until 30 meters before the end without falling during the first session, which gave me a lot of hope for actually having a chance at the 440m. The thing with lines like these and a flat ground without natural dip, is that you have to hang them very high (4-4,5m) to actually make them comparable to a single line with the same weight. This means, when you fall near the ends, you absolutely HAVE to catch the line, otherwise there is a big chance of breaking yourself, as I nearly did just at the start of my training. Near the end of my second session I came close to crossing the line. I was about three meters away from the ground, feeling very loose, and trusting my catching skills absolutely. I lost balance, reached for the line with my left hand and… I missed. For one endless second I was weightless in the air. I didn’t really know what was happening, but it felt great. Then I landed on the right side of my back, and I couldn’t breathe anymore. I was rolling around like this for about 10 seconds. People were standing around me, asking if they should call the ambulance. Luckily my friend Annelies came quickly running from the other side of the line, and told the people it was ok. I lay on my back for a few minutes and besides being a bit stiff, everything was fine. I guess this was a fair warning that I’m a bit more vulnerable then I realized.
After about six of these two to four hour sessions I finally sent the line fully without falling. Training was far from done, though, so time for the next step… 185m double! Since I already wrote a blog about this line, I won’t bore you with the details, but just post the link here; http://www.dreamwalkers.nl/longline-training-double-185m/

Endurance: 60m double Core2HS
One week before the record attempt, I still had to train my endurance. After all, I would need about 30 minutes of walking to cross the line, in my estimation. So I put on 1kg weights on both my wrists, and had three sessions of one long, continuous 500m walk along the 60m line. Feeling far from ready (besides, I didn’t stand on a single strand line for over 2 months, oops), I left Holland and started my hitchhiking.

Philipp and I decided to set up a training line before we would actually rig the beast the following day. 335m of single line (finally some single line training). Even though we had a great 9:1 pulley system with an MPD as brake, having only two people to rig this line was a bit ambitious. After pulling in about 150m of rope, with just one meter of pulley system left, the line was far from completely tensioned. The natural dip was about 8-9m, however at this low tension there would have needed to be an additional 3m of sag for the line to be walkable all the way. Luckily it was possible to walk to a third and after a few attempts I managed to do this pretty smoothly without falling, but this was still a LOT shorter than the actual line… The line was very powerful and I was completely drained after walking about 200m of the line in total. I began to lose hope for the line the next day.
Just before we left we checked out the 440m spot. Since it was not such a good spot, and we’d have to be at least 5m in the tree on one side, we decided we would go a bit shorter, and we found the perfect spot for: 405m, ~4m natural sag, 3m high anchor on one side, and 4m on the other side.

Since there was seven people, it was a lot easier to tension the lines. Hari (Helmut Netzwerker) and I started to set up the 405m line, and the others worked on a 280m nylon line. First we tensioned the 280 with everyone, and then went over to the 405m polyester line to make it walkable. I was getting a bit nervous. What if I had no chance at all? Would all my hard work have been for nothing?
Almost ready, we let the line relax a bit and had a quick lunch, because the last thing we would want is to hit the ground after walking 300m of the line. However, I just needed to try the line, I was too nervous to wait. I think Hari noticed this, because within one minute he was there to help me tension. Quickly it was done, and I immediately got onto the line. I stared in the distance. The far, far point of the end in the distance. It was too far away to even think about walking this thing, this line, this beast completely, so I just stared down for a minute. Getting ready. A deep breath, and I stood up.

To my surprise, the line didn’t do anything, and I was completely calm. I started walking quicker and quicker. It was like it was walking on a 20 meter line. Why was it so still? Was the hard part about to hit me and throw me off? I didn’t have any music on, so I heard the people talking. “Man, is he going to onsight it?”, after walking 100m of the line flawlessly in the first 5 minutes. “Shut up” was my reaction (sorry Dan). I couldn’t think about sending. Sooner or later I would make a misstep, that was one thing I knew for sure.

Halfway. Everything had gone smoothly so far, but now the fight began. The first time I gave a shake to the line. I wasn’t ready for the super delayed oscillations that a huge line like this would produce. My body reacted too quickly, which meant I only shook the line more. For about half a minute I was standing in one position, fighting the line, not thinking about going any further. I shouted as loud as I could, and at that moment my muscles relaxed and slowly but steadily the shakes stopped and I continued walking.
So far I’ve only been looking down, not more than 10 meters in front of me. I quickly glanced up to see how far I’d come. It felt like I would never reach the end. About 200m to go, more than 500 perfect steps in front of me. It seemed impossible.

The last quarter. I felt everyone staring at me in my back. I still didn’t think I would make it. The last 50 meters quickly went up to 4 meters of the ground, and usually I have a really hard time with the end. I wasn’t too nervous. After all, I wouldn’t make it all the way to the end anyways, but it was a good try, right? Closer, 20 meters away from the end. Still no fight, the line got easier and easier. Wait… Can I really make this? The last 10 meters it struck me; I can actually walk this line! The line started vibrating rapidly under my feet, I stood on one leg, fought, regained myself, and started to almost run. 5 meters to go, I heard people yelling, but I wasn’t there yet. 3… 2… 1… I screamed. I had made it!