Changing Season - Changing Fitness

In the past couple of days Kris has had a couple of indications that his fitness profile has changed. Mind you - this is not news. We’ve been discussing this change for quite some time. It’s just a couple of observations on the changing season.

Observation #1 - Kris Freeman is not a paddler.
Kris enjoys paddling a kayak as secondary training session. At the height of his paddling training Kris got out in the boat four times for a total of 5.5 hours during his 92 hour training block in late August. He paddles a light boat with a carbon fiber wing-paddle (I might be getting the terminology all wrong here), and he goes fast. During August he got to be pretty fit for paddling - he could go out and really whale on it for an hour and a half. Yesterday, after his Sunapee test, he went out for his last paddle of the year, and his first in almost four weeks. It wasn’t an important workout, but I didn’t object to the idea and Kris wanted one last crack at it before the boat gets put away this weekend. Yesterday he was a weakling - his arms were tired after about 45 minutes on the water.

It’s Fall. Kris Freeman is a ski racer, not a paddler.

Observation #2 - Kris needs to eat a lot if he’s going to do long ODs.
When Kris is training these 90 hour three week blocks he eats like a horse. Maybe two horses. And a couple of pigs. Might as well throw in the whole barn. I haven’t asked for total daily caloric intake during that kind of training, but it’s huge. Really huge. He can’t sleep through the night without getting up to eat. When the volume drops and the intensity increases his caloric intake drops significantly. Last week was 18.5 hours. His rolling four-week tally is below 70 for the first time since April. The overall training load has been boosted by an increase in intensity, but on the whole he hasn’t required the huge calories that he was taking-in back in August and September. Today Kris did a five-hour skate session, and he got hungry. At about 3:15 into the session he was low on blood sugar, and he had to stop and a store and eat their inventory. Then he was back on the road, feeling better.

Kris always eats to fuel his training effort. He hasn’t tried to actively manage his weight for a couple of years, but he’s conscientious about how much he’s eating. His appetite already adjusted to a lower overall load, and he’s no longer storing massive amounts of glycogen. He’s going to have to be careful to pre-load fuel for his ODs for the rest of the Fall.

Changing Season - Changing Fitness

Kris Freeman

Mon, Oct 22, 2007 - By Zach Caldwell