Kris Freeman

Kris called last night, at about 9:00PM my time, from Lahti. I’ve been confused about time differences ever since he went to Asia - I have to stop and think every time we have a conversation. But I was pretty sure that 9:00PM my time was damned late for Kris. He confirmed that it was about 3:00AM over there, but he’d just finished a day of travel that began with a 4:30AM wake-up in Sapporo, and he was wired.

We talked again today, after he had made himself wake-up at 8:00AM. Getting onto the right sleep schedule is important. He was planning to go for an easy run today, and then sleep really well tonight. The plan for the next few weeks involves racing the remaining Scandinavian World Cups, and not much else. Coming off the most brutal 50K effort he’s ever made, followed by transcontinental travel starting before dawn the next day, it doesn’t seem that training is a really high priority. Get rested. Get normal. Get to the race.

The upcoming schedule offers some good opportunities for Kris. A 15K classic in Lahti on Sunday, followed by the Drammen sprints mid-week, and the Holmenkollen 50K classic on the weekend, with a 30K pursuit the following weekend in Falun to round-out the season. From there he’ll come home and race Spring Nationals up in Northern Maine.

I figure that in much of the ski racing world the order of importance of major ski races goes something like this:

1. Olympics
2. Holmenkollen
3. Vasaloppet
4. World Championships

I’m sure there are plenty of people who would love to start a discussion on the subject, and that’s not my intent here. I simply want to recognize that Holmenkollen is a truly prestigious event on the calendar every year, and Kris is very pleased with his 50K fitness. He wouldn’t mind if it was hard and fast instead of slush - but he’s excited for whatever the day serves up.

Kris seems to have beaten the virus that has dogged him since the day before the 15K at worlds. He figures he probably just killed it off during the 50K, along with much of himself. He reiterated today that the 50K was the hardest race effort he’s ever made. In fact, one reason he called was that he wanted to retract his unedited race synopsis because he was so fried when he wrote it that he didn’t give much thought to how it would reflect upon him. (I told him I’d put a disclaimer, or apology, or whatever up here for the use of a few four-letter words, but that the write-up should stand. And so it stands.) Anyway, it’s unclear how his health is - but it hasn’t gotten much worse. He’s not going to be too fresh for the 15K this weekend, but neither are most of the other contenders, so it’ll be a fair race.

One final note on World Championships. Luck is hard to control, maybe impossible. Kris didn’t have much luck on his side at Worlds. He had an inopportune crash in the pursuit. The next day, out training, he skied around a blind corner on one of the trails and had a head-on collision with another skier - hard enough to rip the binding off the NIS plate on the skis he was using. That has resulted in a knee that is still black and blue. The next race was the 15K which was, by all accounts, mayhem due to the weather. He got a virus. He broke his best pair of skis testing the day before the 50K. The 50K came down to a slush-fest. In the end he buckled down and put forth a very good effort and a result he can be proud of in the 50K. He had every excuse he could have wanted ready at hand, and he ignored it all.

Kris has not always responded well to adversity on the road. He’s very positive when things are going well, but he can get pretty negative when things aren’t going well. He says that he got a pretty good scolding from his girlfriend, Julie, after the 15K when he was fishing for a little sympathy. This was not an easy championships and conditions were prime for the wheels to come off. I’m very proud of Kris’s effort and focus in the 50K, and I’m satisfied with the result under the circumstances. I’m pretty sure that, on pure form, it was the least good day he had. But he shrugged bad luck and circumstances off his back, along with a number of pretty big names. So, although it’s a little weird to be doing it on a page maintained on his behalf, I’d like to publicly offer my congratulations on a really good bad day.