Kris Freeman

I called Kris a couple of times yesterday evening, starting at about six PM, to see how the six hour OD run had gone. He finally called back at nine PM and he still hadn’t made it home. It seems that Justin planned the route (again) and they encountered some unexpected impedence.

Lots of blow-downs, trails diminishing into poorly defined paths for woodland critters, etc. All of this someplace in the general vicinity of Waterville Valley, involving the tri-pyramids and whiteface among other landmarks. Kris planned for six hours - fueling, hydration, mindset, you name it. Six hours into the run they were still deep in the woods. Six hours and five minutes into the run Kris got really hungry, and it was apparent that Justin wasn’t totally sure where they were going. The route took them up over some mountain to finish things off, and they found the mountain and found their way up. Then they found another trail down. Unfortunately it was the wrong trail and took them back to near where they started the climb. Since it would have taken at least another hour to climb the mountain again and find the right trail down, they decided to make their way out of the woods. The one piece of good luck on the day is that the only two people they saw all day long gave them a ride from the trail-head where they emerged, back to the main road, and then to their car. It was about another five miles out to the main road.

So, the run ended up being seven hours long, with the last hour pretty hypoglycemic for Kris. Justin’s bonk set in pretty well at about 5:15, but Kris figures he had a lot more adrenaline because he actually had a clue how far behind schedule and how lost they were. To be fair, this is my write-up of Kris’s report, which was prefaced on the phone by “my brother is such an ***hole”. Justin - if you want equal time just give me a call and I’ll write it up from your point of view!

Given the way OD training works (the effort really takes a toll starting at depletion), and given the lack of food and water for the last hour of the run, I figure this session was three or four times as taxing as the six hour session that was planned. Kris was very hungry when they came out of the woods, but he didn’t have much food, and he didn’t have any insulin with him. So it took a while to get everything together to begin the refueling process. When he called at 9PM he was in his car, driving home, and had finally had some gatorade and power bars and was feeling much better.

All things considered, Kris figures that going ahead with the planned back-to-back OD sessions by attempting a skate OD today would be ill-advised. I agree. He’s sleeping this morning, and later today he’ll get out and paddle his new boat for a couple of hours. We’ll talk later and make a revised training plan. Because the last hour (unfueled) of that run is so far outside of what was planned it’s going to be necessary to play it by ear for a few days, until we’re certain that Kris is sufficiently recovered for another hard effort.