Kris Freeman

Kris called me this morning at 9:00AM. It’s 5:00 AM right now. When he called it was 7:00PM. Are you confused? I was. The good news is that he’s starting to get adjusted to the time change, and had just gone through his first unassisted night of sleep (no sleeping medication) since arriving in Japan. He sounded completely different from a couple of days ago.

The skiing where they’re staying is great - extra blue. Great, that is, if you’re not interested in testing skis or courses in Sapporo which is normally wetter. Given that they’re just passing time and getting accustomed to the time change, and given that the training volume is quite low, the decision to go to China is looking pretty good. It sounds as though most of the skiing world will be travelling direct from Europe to China, or else skipping China and travelling direct to Japan. Kris is happy to have an extra week of screwy time under his belt!

Skiing yesterday was encouraging. Kris has slowed his easy training pace down a bit, so he was just cruising around with his heart rate in the low 100s. That’s low 100s as opposed to low 110s - like 104 or 105. He was still travelling faster than most of the people around, including his teammates. A far-cry from the Olympics a year ago, where walking the courses put him right to 150. Yesterday was a couple of hours of skiing. Today is an hour and a half. Sunday is another two hours, and Monday another hour and a half. Tuesday is off, Wednesday is travel, Friday is race. But Friday he should be feeling good and getting really, really antsy. I’m glad I don’t have to live with him.