What do you do?

This season has not gone as well as I and my coaches have hoped. I can make excuses and rationalize all day if I want to but the fact is that I was not able to ski as fast as I thought I would. I trained as hard as I could every day. Maybe I trained too hard. What I will not say is that if I were more committed I would ski better. I am as commited as you can get. The plan just didn’t pan out this year. There will be some changes next year.

If I can pick out one mistake that I made this year that probably hurt me more than anything else was a lack of caution. Last year whenever I started to feel really tired I backed off and let the body catch up. This year I pushed through spells of exhaustion. It made me tougher but unfortunately it made me slower too. I was able to put together one race this year that was truely great in Kuusamo. The stars aligned and I was able to use all the strength and fitness I have built for a great race. Then I got sick… for a month. I haven’t been close to that level of fitness since. I scored a few world cup points but I had no truely good races.

My race in the Holmenkolen yesterday was just embarassing. I had been feeling sluggish and tired all week. I started out slowly and got slower. Any time I pushed hard my body siezed up and I returned to my pathetic little pace. I debated dropping out after 30k when it was clear that world cup points were not going to happen. However, I don’t drop out of races unless I am sick and I know I am damaging myself. I wasn’t sick yesterday just… slow.

Given that I have not been able to predict when I would ski good and when I would ski bad all year, I have decided to go to the world cup finals in Bormio Italy next week. The night before my 5th place finish in Kuusamo my roommate asked me what I was hoping for from the next day’s race. Given that I was coming off of a 50th place finish and a nasty cold I told him that I was hoping not to embarass myself. In the hopes that history repeats itself, I hope I don’t embarass myself next weekend. Kris

What do you do?

Kris Freeman

Mon, Mar 10, 2008 - By Kris Freeman