Kris Freeman

Today was Sprint Relay day at the September USST Whistler Camp. This training session is of particular interest to Kris because he’s one of a handful of guys who are on the list as potential members of the two-man team that will represent the US in the sprint relay at World Championships. Today was one of a number of events and training sessions that will be considered in picking the team. Of course, the most important consideration will be who is going fast as the race itself draw near. But the coaches need to see the skiers in the event enough times to know what to expect.

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Kris is back in Whistler - this time with the whole USST. This is Kris’s second intensity camp of the year - the July camp being the first. The program this time is similar, but volume is reduced a little bit, and he’ll take advantage of the presence of the sprint team for some high speed head to head action. Today was day 2 of the camp, and the first big effort of the camp - a classic sprint time trial. Full Post »

Kris exercised appropriate judgment and restraint after his miscalculation earlier in the week, and he appears to have navigated the situation quite smoothly. He had a good five hour double-pole OD on Thursday - a little “off” for the first hour, but then quite good. Yesterday he went to a Motley Crue concert with a bunch of highschool friends - the big social engagement of the summer (Julie’s sister’s wedding notwithstanding). He had one beer and nine hours of sleep. Pretty lame by Crue concert standards, I imagine. But good judgment once again. He’s got one more pursuit OD coming up. Then a trip out to the Democratic National Convention to give a speech (not the keynote), followed by Whistler Camp #2. Updates to come…

Kris is an intensely conscientious athlete and as a rule he doesn’t do things by mistake. With very rare exceptions, he doesn’t miss planned training sessions and he doesn’t do unplanned sessions. Mistake number one of this year was not an exception to that rule. The plan called for a six hour run, and what he did was a six hour run. It wasn’t so much a mistake as a miscalculation. So when is a planned and executed six hour run not the right six hour run? What qualifies it as a mistake? Good question. Full Post »

The last update left Kris at the airport facing a three-hour delay as he set-off for four days of sponsor travel. As it turned out, that turned into a seven hour delay. The two middle days of travel were relatively uneventful, but things got screwed up again on the way back home, and he ended up crawling into his own bed at 3:00 AM last Friday morning. Needless to say, he took Friday off. Since then things have been good. 4-6-3-4 for volume hours Saturday through today, and good sensations throughout. Sunday’s six hour classic OD was particularly positive. Circumstances were a bit unsettled for a while there - with the whistler camp followed by the triathlon followed by the sponsor travel. The last four days have been a welcome opportunity to put in some consistent and uninterrupted volume, and Kris has proven that his feet are firmly on the ground.

That doesn’t mean that the road ahead is free of all distractions. Julie’s sister is getting married soon (fortunately quite near where Kris lives), and then at the end of the month Kris will head out to Denver where he’ll speak about diabetes at the Democratic National Convention. After that it’s back out to Whistler for another go at intensity.

Kris had a good day under difficult and somewhat eventful circumstances at the Top Notch triathlon on Saturday. He’s already written-up the race on his new Fasterskier blog – you can read his account of it there. He won the race, but that’s not news – it would have been disappointing (even shocking) if he hadn’t. Unfortunately the wet and muddy condition of the course, along with various other mishaps made it impossible to use the effort as any kind of measurement against previous efforts. So we have to take Kris’s impressions and sensations as the only useful data, and those were positive. Full Post »

After Saturday’s pursuit time trial there was still a day left of Whistler Camp - time for one more three hour run. Fortunately for me, Amy headed off to the Haig glacier at 5:30 Sunday morning, and three hours is still a bit long for Gunnar - so I got a bye on the last session. Kris and Dan headed out into the fog, clouds and mist of the first “typical” Squamish day since the start of the camp, armed with a photocopy of a map, and a vague idea of where to go. To be a bit more accurate, I dropped the guys off at the Brennan Falls parking lot, and they headed up the backside of the chief - aiming to come out in Valleycliff and get home sometime around the 3 hour mark. With Dan navigating they arrived back at the place at 3:00:03 - well within Dan’s stated acceptable tolerance of one minute per hour of planned training. Full Post »

Today was the last intensity session of Kris’s July intensity camp here in Whistler. He finished up with a 30K pursuit time trial, and he looked great. I’ve seen Kris do a lot of these types of sessions, and he’s usually impressive. But this was particularly impressive - he skied with more than just strength and capacity. He had great energy, and he attacked the road pretty much from start to finish. Full Post »

It’s been a couple of days since the bounding session on the WOP red course, and today was the hill-climb time trial that Amy uses with the CVTC team. The last couple of days were pretty low-key. It’s worth putting that last comment in context though. I went on Tuesday’s recovery run - three hours, From Diamond Head parking lot up past Elfin Lakes to the Gargoyles and back the same way. It was the hardest session I’ve been on this year by far. My average HR was 148 and I was pleased to keep up. Kris averaged 104. It’s all a matter of perspective - recovery or epic. Full Post »