Back home - fighting a cold

Who needs more than a title? Kris got home early this week, and arrived with a cold. There’s a good reason to try to avoid international travel when you’re run-down. In this case there was no option (short of staying in Russia for the holidays). Kris and Pete and I have had lots of opportunity to debrief and go over the first period. While we’re all encouraged and pleased with a 5th place finish in Kuusamo, we’re all disappointed with the rest of the period, and have identified a couple of places where we feel some miscalculations were made. The training load the first week - and particularly the inclusion of a 5 hour OD - was too much. That rocked Kris back on his heels and the rest of the period was one long reaction to circumstances. Clearly, Kris rebounded well from the initial set-back with his good race in Kuusamo. However, with the benefit of hindsight it’s apparent that we all needed the confidence to put more of a training load on the schedule prior to the Davos races in order to ensure stability through Rybinsk.

These mistakes were not made because we failed to consider the circumstances. They were extremely well thought out mistakes. Like several other times this Fall, we miscalculated Kris’s response to a load, and like every other time, we were too conservative in our estimation of how quickly his fitness profile changes in response to a stimulus. This is a little bit galling, because it’s one the specific individual characteristics that we made note of when we first started designing a training plan about 20 months ago. Sometimes, it seems, you’ve really got to be beaten over the head with something a few times.

We’ve made some minor adjustments to Kris’s plan between now and the Canmore world cup races. Kris does not expect to feel fresh as a spring daisy at US Nationals, but he’ll be there as part of his preparation for the World Cups.

Back home - fighting a cold

Kris Freeman

Sun, Dec 23, 2007 - By Zach Caldwell