Comments
Posted by Zach Caldwell on September 24th, 2007I’m not a big fan of the type of discussions that tend to arise on open-comment web pages. However, I receive a fair amount of e-mail questions relating to the information on this site, and I thought it might save some time and hassle to allow comments and questions.
For the time being all comments are moderated (by me). Nothing will show up until I give it the go-ahead. If a comment is pertinent and polite then I’ll allow it to post. If it’s obnoxious or poorly written I’ll probably trash it. I may respond to questions, but make no promises. I’ll try to set it up so that Kris can respond without moderation.
If this change seems to steer the tone or content of this site in an undesirable direction then I’ll ditch the comments. If it goes well maybe we can lose the moderation. If nothing happens, maybe nobody’s paying attention anyway!
September 24th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Very cool - thanks for opening this dialogue. Though more a fan than a ski racer, I find the blow-by-blow of Freeman’s training to be pretty interesting and even inspiring. Someday, I too can wear out a set of rollerski tires in just one OD…
Though of course the site should always be about Freeman’s training and racing, I’d be very interested in hearing, even just in the comments, how a regular joe - not unathletic, but not a specimen like Freeman - could model a training program on Freeman’s, without necessarily having to get into lactate testing, VO2 max tests, and all that. How can his training regimen be stepped down for a citizen racer, if indeed it can? General guidelines? Book recommendations? Website reading (like today’s Steinar Mundal post on Fasterskier)?
Thanks.
Oh - go, Kris, go!
September 25th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Sounds like a good system Zach!!
September 25th, 2007 at 7:47 am
What is the overall goal this year without the Olympics or world championships? Are there certain races that Kris is targeting or is the first goal back in the red group and extend the peak as long as it can go? Will we see anyone from the US go to the Tour de Ski this year?
September 25th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
With winter approaching, last night I started looking through the pile of articles and e-mails I’ve accumulated over the last 20 years or so.
That pile is over 3″ deep. At least a third and maybe even half were written by you Zach. Some of them all the way back to when you were in college and writing for ‘Ski Racing Magazine’
So I would like to thank you for sharing all your knowledge and all the effort you and others (you know who you are) have put in XC ski racing.
Really looking forward to watching Kris and our US Team race this season.
September 25th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
So far so good - thanks for the comments. A couple of quick responses.
Christopher - you have a very good question. Trying to scale Kris’s training down to a level sustainable by mortals is a difficult task. But there are very few basic principles governing what Kris does, and these are applicable to most people. I’ve just spent a few minutes trying to craft a really short response and it’s not working, so I’ll have to address this in another way - maybe on my own website at http://www.caldwellsport.com/. Check back soon…
Charlie - Good question about goals. In April I went out to Utah with Kris for the USST testing camp. It was a great opportunity for Kris and Pete and myself to spend several days in low-key face to face discussion over what happened last season, and how to address the future. Anything I pass along here is based on what I took out of those discussions.
It’s very difficult to be competitive for an entire World Cup calendar if you’re not based in Europe. For the time being, and through the 2010 Olympics, Kris’s focus is on one-day races at major events. Last year it was World Championships. This year, as you point out, we don’t have World Championships or Olympics to focus on. However, we still have work to do practicing preparation for a major event like worlds or the Olympics. For this season Kris’s focus is on the Canadian World Cups in January. Having said that, the plan is definitely to hit the season at a higher level than last year, and getting into the Red Group is a large secondary goal because it means better start positions and funding (the organizers pay many of the expenses for Red Group athletes).
Kris will not do the Tour de Ski this season, and as far as I know there aren’t any other US athletes planning to attend. This was not an easy decision. Pete and Kris and I all feel that the Tour de Ski could be a fantastic event format for Kris. However, the event represents a huge stress for both athletes and support/service staff. The resources required to be competitive in such an event are very large, and the penalty to be paid for going in without sufficient support is high. Just ask the Canadians who did the Tour last year.
Last year’s US Nationals, which comprised four events in five days, was an interesting test case for Kris. He did all four events and we kept a close eye on his recovery and response during that event as something of a stand-in for Tour de Ski on a smaller scale. This year the World Cup finale in Bormio is structured as a three-day mini-tour, so many of the same strategic decisions will come into play.
The Tour de Ski seems to be the future of the sport. I think that it will take a little while for the format to sugar down to something refined. And there’s a lot for skiers to learn about stage racing. Kris already has his eye on the event and is eager to contest it when the time is right. But the priority through 2010 is an Olympic medal.
September 25th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Good to see the common sense approach to the 100 bpm HRM mystery, caused by Too Much Information (TMI). It’s okay to ditch the “steam gauges� sometimes! I learned my own lesson this summer about TMI. Ignoring the “benefit� of the data, Kris skiing 75 miles (rolling terrain) over a 6 hour DP session provides certain physiological benefit, and is plenty “hard� enough on its own merits. I like the Zach’s Truck Horn Interval sessions. Good work for curing last season’s apparent shortcoming; last few k’s of the race. (I mean that in the most positive way). Looking forward to the next training phase & reports. Thanks for making it public, now w/comments.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Does Kris do any sort of altitude training in preparation for major events (I guess in the case of this coming year, before the CDN World Cups)? Does he, or the US ski team, make use of altitude tents?
September 25th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Greg - last year was somewhat rare in that altitude preparation wasn’t a very large concern. It was pretty much off the radar. For the coming season Kris will most likely head up to Canmore pretty much immediately after US Nationals for a training and acclimatization block. None of this is in stone, mind you.
In general the focus that Kris has had in the past couple of years has been on the basics. Getting as fit as possible, and accommodating the best possible training. In general that means avoiding unnecessary external stressors. Kris actually owns a very nice molecular sieve set-up for converting his bedroom to an hypoxic chamber. He used it for one week in the fall three or four years ago, slept very poorly and almost immediately got sick.
We have had a number of conversations about using the hypoxic environment, and I have no personal ethical argument with any training method that generates a training effect in response to a stress. However, we have always felt that the gains that may be available are too costly in terms of lost training capacity. The research on hypoxic environments are hardly conclusive, and the best case scenario is that it would take some time and controlled experimentation to make the tool useful.
I think it’s worth bearing in mind that there are (at least) two targets to what we broadly refer to as “altitude training”. One is acclimatization. In order to have optimal performances at altitude it’s necessary for the body to adjust. I’m not a physiologist and I can’t itemize all of this for you, but many of these adjustments are based on a hypobaric environment, not just hypoxia. That means you’ve actually got to be at low atmospheric pressure (high altitude) to trigger the changes. The use of an altitude tend is pretty much just an attempt to boost hemoglobin count. I’m less convinced of the efficacy of using a normobaric hypoxic environment for preparation for high altitude events.
Having said that, Kris’s hemotological profile has shown some room for improvement in the past several years. When he was living most of the year in Park City his hemoglobin count was often near the FIS maximum. Since then it has gradually dropped a couple of points. Perhaps, if all other factors were maintained, there might be some room for advantageous use of hypoxic environments. But now is not the time.