Kris Freeman

I drove up to Woodstock this morning for the 4th of July road race (7 miles) because I couldn’t decide who I thought would win the head to head race between Kris and Justin. As it turns out, this is as close as Kris ever got to Justin.

Justin has been doing some pretty focused running training, and he’s an accomplished runner. In a straight-up flat five K it would have been an easy pick in favor of Justin. Kris has done almost nothing to develop leg speed, and has been training extremely high volume. But this course was seven miles, and featured a big nasty climb in the middle. A couple of weeks ago Kris put quite a lot of time into Justin on the Sunapee hill climb. Kris thought he had a chance, and I couldn’t disagree. Apparently, Justin felt qualified to disagree.The first couple miles of the race are flat, and Justin ran fast from the gun. He never really attacked, just slowly pulled away. Kris was running 5:20 miles and had no additional gear. He could hold that pace at a HR of about 160, but upping the effort to 180 didn’t gain him any additional pace. Justin had about 30 seconds on Kris by the time the hill started in earnest at around 3 miles. Kris figured he’d peg back some time on the climb.Great plan, but it didn’t happen. Kris might have picked up a few seconds early in the climb, but Justin was running well. He hit the downhill with a big gap and it was as good as over. As good as over from my point of view anyway - still another couple of miles to run. In the end Justin beat Kris by a minute and five seconds with an impressive performance. Justin has been saying that he’s got pretty good speed, but nothing great for fitness. It seems that he’s got a pretty well rounded package at the moment. His fitness is nothing to sneeze at.Kris was pleased with his effort, and he certainly looked fit and strong. It was good for me to see him make an effort like this in the middle of the last week of a big block of training. He’s definitely feeling the load. But Kris himself said it best: “what did you expect? That I’d be feeling as fresh as a daisy?”

As I mentioned, Kris is in the middle of a really tough block. According to the plan he’s got outlined, at the end of this week he’ll have just finished a 36 hour week, and a 90 hour three-week block. The 36 hour week will end with a ten hour bike ride. The planned 26 hours leading up to that bike ride is good hard training, but nothing exceptional. I fully expect that the bike ride will be very hard. Kris will be wiped out at the end of this block. He’s got a really easy week to follow with several days of nothing but sleep planned. He’ll need it. He’s already promised to kick Justin’s ass at Sunapee on the 15th. Plan to come and watch the next showdown…