Kris Freeman

I was confident that Kris had good fitness. Pete was confident that Kris had good fitness. Most importantly, Kris was confident that Kris had good fitness. But none of us expected today’s 5th place finish.

As it turns out I had time to write a post yesterday, but I didn’t have a great deal to add to what had already been written. Saturday was a good day, but mostly because Newell was 4th in the sprint and Billy Demong had the second podium of the weekend for the combined guys. Kris did a test effort on the 5K loop and he felt pretty good. I watched him and he looked pretty good. But pretty good does not make for top 10s on the World Cup. After the effort it was an easy call for Kris to decide to race. He didn’t hurt his lungs and recovery was coming quickly. He wasn’t feeling perfect, but he was confident that a race would not risk his health any further.

I though Saturday’s effort looked like a sure bet for top 30. I harbored secret hopes for top 20, but I didn’t say anything to anybody about that - including Kris. It just seemed like asking for too much considering that Thursday when we skied together I was able to keep up (definitely a bad sign), and he was still sleeping 12 hours a day. Sunday just seemed to be coming too fast.

Today was cold - about -15C and extremely high humidity. Kick was easy (Rode green and some other Swedish stuff mixed in). Kris chose a pair of fairly high and active skis with a soft finish and a TF02 grind (which would be a decidedly wet grind back home). His skis were good, but nobody got ahead on skis today. A few people might have lost out with bad skis (it wasn’t noticeable to the eye that their skis were bad but one has to wonder what the Swedes did wrong today). Pete called it early - right after the first round of kick wax testing - it was a test of fitness today, and nothing else.

While the US service team and coaches were testing wax the Russians were out - what - warming up, I guess. About four or five guys were hammering by, stripped down to race gear. I think one of them was even wearing a bib. They came by at intervals of about 30 seconds, plus or minus. I didn’t look hard enough to see who it was - whether it was actually guys who were racing the real race - but we figured they were probably having a race to see who got to use the best pair of skis.

Kris managed his blood sugar well today. It gets trickier for him when he’s been taking it really easy, and four days off counts as easy. On Friday he noted that his basal insulin dose was still surprisingly low - at 5 units. Normally, if he was healthy, he’d expect that basal dose to climb after that many days of rest. Last night he took 12 units of 24 hour basal insulin, and he took another unit this morning. He’s been playing with that dose in order to sufficiently mobilize blood sugar for a race effort, and his sensitivity was going down in any case. When he got down to the wax tent his glucose was pretty low, so he took an atypical pre-race feed to maintain enough blood glucose.

Because it was cold, and because Kris needs at least 15 or 20 minutes to balance his blood sugar before the start, he had to modify his normal warm-up routine. It would be a really bad idea to get all sweaty and then cool off and have to go to the start wet and cold. So he took a low-key warm-up, tested his skis, made the necessary adjustments and started the race.

On the first major climb of the day Kris looked a bit stiff, but he loosened up and turned up the tempo a bit as the race went on. He started before the red group and came through for his second lap about eight seconds before Franz Goering started. Kris figured that Franz must have started pretty slow because it took him about a K and a half to catch up. As it turned out, Franz was the prefect ride for Kris today. He tagged along for about a lap and a half before putting on a move on the second to last climb - about 3K from the finish.

In the early going Kris wasn’t expecting a top ten finish. None of us were. It took a while - until his last lap really - to understand how well things were going. Early on Kris was getting splits off Devon Kershaw who started a minute and a half in front of him and was leading the race at the 5K mark. When Kris heard that he was 11 seconds down to Devon at 5K he figured that Devon was having a good day and that he - Kris - might be in there for some World Cup points. When he was starting his last lap the final starters were just coming to the 3.1K split station and the race was beginning to take shape. It was clear that Devon had started really fast, and that Kris was running close to the top ten.

Starting in May Kris did his regular intensity sessions as sustained 45 minute efforts with a build-up in the pace over the last 10 or 15 minutes. These started as basic threshold sessions, and the intensity increased through the season, but he was always working toward an acceleration in the final third. We made that plan in April of last year when it was apparent that Kris was skiing in touch with the leaders through about 10K of a 15K race, but losing up to 45 seconds or a minute in the final 5K. Today he was 23 seconds out of the lead at 10K and 27 seconds out at the finish, and moved from 9th to 5th. Teichmann gained nine seconds on Kris over those five K to come from 12th place to third. He wasn’t the fastest guy in the end, but he was one of the guys who finished strong. It’s gratifying to see an acknowledged weakness addressed and neutralized. The season is long - nobody is claiming any long-term successes based on one 5th place finish. But the specifics of today’s performance are gratifying.

Today unfolded faultlessly, but this was not the best of Kris Freeman. He had the right race - the right head, the right body, the right skis, the right ride - to be fifth today. But he can’t possibly be at his best so soon after being sick. He decided to race for sure 24 hours before the start, and he was very unsure before that. The team has a travel day coming up, and more races next weekend in Davos. As of now Kris is planning to race the 15K classic and the relay in Davos. He won’t do any heavy training between now and the end of first period in two weekends (Rybinsk, Russia). At this point it’s all a question of energy management. He’s got fitness to burn, and he’s got a good opportunity to train when he gets back home in mid December, with over a month until the Canadian World Cups.

Today was a perfect indication of where Kris’s fitness is. He should get better for the next couple of weeks. Anything can happen, and on a less perfect day Kris could finish 25th with a better effort than he had today. He’ll take what he can get, knowing that the potential is there for top five finishes. When he comes home in December he’ll set about claiming the tolerance that might give him true podium potential.

Pete and I caught a flight from Kuusamo to Helsinki this evening. The Estonians, French, Germans and Norwegians were all on the same flight. We stood in line for security with Tobias Angerer. He was 8th today, and 8th last week in Beitostolen as well. He’s relaxed - it was the same last year. For right now he’s quite satisfied with top 10, although he acknowledges that expectations from the press are extremely high. Kris has a big step to make to be at the level where top tens are satisfactory and wins are inevitable. He hasn’t made it, but he’s equaled his best World Cup result, and he got a lot of congratulations from the competition today. “Kris Freeman is back” - I heard it more than once today.