Kris Freeman

Our delay in Rovaniemi was nice while it lasted, but it meant a late night - arriving at the hotel in Helsinki at about 1:30AM. Grover had an early flight and was out the door before 5:30 (though I have only the vaguest recollection of him leaving the room). The rest of us were scheduled to catch a 7:00 AM shuttle for flights at 8:45 (me, toward home) and 8:55 (the rest of the crew, headed toward Davos). At breakfast Kris told me that his sugar had gone low again on the airplane ride to Helsinki - down to about 50. He took some sugar and turned down the dose some more. He slept on 0.3 units/hour and sugar went down overnight again. His insulin sensitivity increased a huge amount over the course of the day yesterday, such that his basal dose is now about 40% of what it was the night before the race. This adjustment isn’t unexpected - travel tends to reduce sensitivity, and he has been expecting it to improve. But the rate of change was incredibly high, and the fact that it fell on a race day (when the dosing strategy is one of a ramping-up of basal insulin prior to a large increase in the dose right before the race) obscured the rate of change. Kris should be fine now.

If there was any chance of running low blood sugar this morning that was obliterated when we got to the airport and the crew realized that their flight was at 7:55, not 8:55. Adrenaline causes Kris’s body to release sugar into the blood (as it does to everybody, presumably). I left them hurrying through check-in at about 7:20 to go check into my own flight. Hopefully they made it.

Hard travel and short sleep is far from ideal on a race trip. Blood sugar difficulty on top of that is super stressful. Kris is planning to run for an hour when they arrive in Davos this afternoon. From there he’ll travel to La Cluzas on Thursday for a mass-start 30K skate race on Saturday. Expectation is for Kris to be able to ski comfortably in the pack. We’d like to see him work toward the top-ten during the last ten K. I don’t expect that he’ll have the gears to contest a sprint, and we’ll all be satisfied this week with a very strong 29K. For now, all eyes are on Davos for the next chance at a great performance. Given the challenges of the last 24 hours that’s the most reasonable expectation.

Kris was 16th (tied) today in Kuusamo. It’s not the result he was looking for, but it’s quite respectable for a basically pedestrian day. He set the race up perfectly - was running right near 10th place, and definitely within striking distance, for the first 10 K. These 15K races tend to break open in the last 5, and Kris headed the wrong direction. Not badly - he could have dropped way back - in the past he’s lose close to a minute in the last 5. It wasn’t a bad day at all. But instead of moving up from 10th he moved back. Full Post »

All of us Americans in Kuusamo seem peripherally aware that it’s Thanksgiving today. Happy Thanksgiving! Kris celebrated with about a six K pace session. This is a little harder than the easy activation intervals he’s been doing, but it’s also his first on-snow classic intensity of the season, and it’s a good idea to feel the tough Kuusamo course at pace.

The pace session went well. It’s hard to know what to look for - there were people all over the course, and a lot of them were doing their own intensity sessions today. Kris went by some of them, and a few came by him - mostly Russians doing 30 second sprints. With so many people moving so many different speeds it’s hard to say anything in relative terms. In absolute terms - comparing Kris to Kris - I would say that he was solid and energetic. He was a gear short of what’s required for a podium, but then, it’s Thursday before a Sunday race. We’ll see on Sunday!

The picture above is from Gallivare. It’s one of about five pictures I’ve taken over here. My intentions are good - I have been meaning to take a lot of pictures. But anything that’s not a priority tends to get pushed aside here. Maybe I’ll remember my camera during the races on the weekend.

Kris was 20th today in the World Cup opener in Gallivare. It is (by his calculation) his best-ever points race in a 15K individual start skate. He started 30 seconds ahead of Marcus Hellner who turned out to be a (big) surprise winner. Marcus caught Kris at about 4K and Kris followed him to about 1K from the end when Marcus put down a huge move to pick-up about five seconds on Piller Cotrer for the win. Full Post »

I’m in Berlin, about to catch a flight to Stockholm and then on to Gallivare. I spoke with Kris yesterday to catch up on goings-on since the Muonio race on Sunday. Monday morning he got out for three hours skating, and felt that his position on his skis was much improved from the day before. He’s always been very sensitive to subtle changes in his base of support, and making some lacing adjustments to his new boots seemed to help things.

Directly after training on Monday the team packed up and hit the road for Gallivare. While Kris has been feeling very good and had good energy throughout, he did feel some fatigue during Monday’s ski. Given the long training/travel day Monday he decided to take Tuesday off. It was his first day off since arriving in Europe, and his roommate during week 1, Torin, came down with a cold. It’s safe to assume that everybody who travels by air is exposed to unfamiliar pathogens. Successfully maintaining good health is a matter of combined intelligence and fortune. With the added knowledge that he had definitely been living in the same space as a virus for the past week, the day off was a judicious application of intelligence!

Tomorrow, Thursday, Kris will do some light intensity in preparation for Saturday’s race. I’ll arrive this evening, so I should have a first-hand account of how things are going. Expectations for the weekend are conservative. We’re definitely looking for a more positive race than in Muonio, but realistically it won’t be a knock-out performance.  I’ll be satisfied with a top-30 and very pleased with a top-20. The big question that remains unanswered is whether Kris’s work on his skating technique in the past year has given him a more competitive gearbox. Two years ago he was a bit better in skating than classic (although that appeared to be largely circumstantial). Last year he was clearly better and more comfortable in classic. He’s worked on his skating and made some subtle but fundamental changes. He’s felt very good in training, and has looked excellent in his training efforts in Whistler and Lake Placid. But that’s on rollerskis, and as he’s found, snow can be a little bit different.

In the past several years Kris hasn’t spent any time on snow in the off-season. He’s never felt that he required a long break-in period at the start of the season. But the break-in period is there nonetheless. It’ll last a little longer, and fade completely over the next two weeks. So far we haven’t seen an indication that it would be worthwhile to sacrifice training quality and continuity for off-season snow time. But that question is open for consideration at the start of every training year.

The plan for the weekend includes the 15K skate on Saturday and the relay on Sunday. We’ve planned to keep the racing load low and to focus on single-race weekends through period one while we work with the new race preparation methods that Kris has been using this season. The Sunday relay event wasn’t part of Kris’s personal plan for the period, but it’s a team event and Kris is a member of a team. The rest of the team is here to race as well, though the first sprint won’t be until Kuusamo. Kris will fill-out the team with Andy, Torin and Chris, and will probably do the anchor leg and take it as a relatively easy tempo ski. At least that was the plan prior to Torin getting sick….

“And the bad news is I was 1:18 behind Legkov.”

Kris felt unsettled and awkward on his skating legs today. He loaded up with lactate quickly and blew up pretty hard in the final lap. As he put it, he couldn’t find his happy place skating on snow today. He’s had it all year on rollerskis, but hasn’t felt it on snow yet.

I don’t have results yet, but as Kris put it, he’ll be surprised if he’s in the top 50. Energy was good, insulin dosing was good. The limitation was easy for Kris to identify. It’s not a result to hang your hat on, but it’s not something to be surprised or upset about at this point. It’s quite in keeping with what he’s done on his first weekend in Europe in the past.

Tomorrow Kris will get a very east three hour ski before the team travels toward Gaellivare.

Tomorrow Kris starts his first race of the year in a FIS race in Muonio, Finland, against what looks like a full World Cup field. Norway and Sweden have their own races this weekend, with some Swiss skiers racing in Norway and Canadians in Sweden. The rest of the world is in Muonio.

Yesterday Kris did some light intensity - something to fire off the motor and get things running well. He felt a bit sluggish starting out, as would be expected for week 1 in Europe, but he felt that the efforts were good. There was a huge amount of traffic on the tracks at the time. There is a 14 minute loop, and four minutes of it were being used for yesterday’s sprint race, leaving everybody else a small amount of space for training. Between that and the format of the session Kris’s peak HR only got up to 164 beats per minute, but in a similar session prior to his final Sunapee hill climb he only managed to hit 167. The pace on these needs to be contained near 15K race pace - the point is to not overload the system and get fatigued. It’s an activation workout.

Kris’s insulin sensitivity is running pretty low right now. This has been a pattern when he travels, and it’s one of the challenges associated with travel. But the Omnipod has made it easier to regulate since he can change his basal dose anytime. With injections he was putting a 12 or 24 hour dose in him, with little opportunity to change. His dosing plan for tomorrow’s race is right in line with what he’s tested in practice, but it’s on the high end of the doses that he’s used, considering his high basal dose.

Expectations for tomorrow are modest. Kris has never been at his best on his first full weekend in Europe. It generally takes two to three weeks to get really settled and reach top speed. Given the strength of the field a top-20 in tomorrow’s 15K skate would be fine news, and a top-10 would be a surprise. Last year in the Beitostolen FIS opener Kris was 20th against a weaker field. A top-20 tomorrow in Muonio would be a good bet for a top-30 performance on the World Cup - a good first race effort.

So far the travel and transition to snow has gone well. Kris is healthy an fit. As long as he stays healthy he’ll have some excellent races in the next five weeks. Tomorrow should not be the best of them.

Kris ran a 20:39 on Sunapee today. As discussed in the previous post, this is directly on target with expectation. I had predicted a 20:42 - eleven seconds shy of his record. He beat that by three seconds - 0.24%. Specifics: Full Post »

It’s been four weeks since I updated this site, and the last thing that Kris wrote on his fasterskier blog was a day after my Whiteface update. It’s less than three weeks until the first World Cup race of the season in Gallivare. Heck of a time to be incommunicado. Things were looking great as I wrote the last post. Kris planned to complete his tough October training block and do the Moosilauke hillclimb. Anybody who’s really paying close attention might have noticed that he didn’t do the Moosilauke hillclimb, and might be wondering what the heck is going on. But I kind of doubt anybody is paying that kind of attention! Anyway, in case you were incredibly concerned about Kris’s race season preparations, rest assured. All is well. Full Post »

The US Ski Team has been in Lake Placid since the middle of last week for their annual Fall training camp in the East, and things have been going well. Things have been going particularly well for Kris.

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