New Blog Site!

If you enjoyed following our training and racing leading up to our 2010 World Championship title, please check out my new website at estherlofgren.blogspot.com to see what the US Women's team is up to in 2011!

Thanks for reading and go USA!

-Esther

Go USA!

Our race Sunday was so much fun. The experience itself was one of the most memorable of my life. The huge, exuberant New Zealand crowd was roaring so loudly as the race before ours, the men’s double, came into the last 500 meters that it was loud at the starting line, nearly a mile away. We locked into our blocks, waited for the light, and then surged out of the start.

Being a part of an eight is an awesome experience in every race, especially ones where you lock into a rhythm and commitment together. We executed our race plan as we came down the course, and despite the few wobbles and dips that came with bumpy water and a focus on bending the oar with everything we had, it did what we’d hoped it would. We finished with open water on the field and the gold medal we’ve been working towards for the last fifteen months.

Waiting for the awards ceremony, I found myself in tears—it hadn’t hit home that we’d won, that all of my work over the last five years and especially my training since joining the squad in Princeton last October had resulted in earning a seat in the boat I’ve dreamed of rowing in for even longer than that, and that as part of that boat, we’d achieved the goal we’d all set for ourselves. It was a powerful and emotional realization, and I was so happy to be able to share my joy with the women with whom I’d achieved these things.

There is so much further to go, and so much more work to do, before my next intermediate goal—the 2011 World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia—and my big goal, the London 2012 Olympics, but this moment is so special and I’m celebrating and sharing it with my boatmates and teammates. I’ll be traveling around the North Island in New Zealand for the next week with my friends Stesha Carle (W2x) and Susan Francia (W2-), getting to explore a bit more of this amazing country than what we’ve been able to see around the hotel, course, and on the bus rides between the two! I can’t wait for our adventures, and then to return stateside and be able to share this experience with my family, friends, and teammates.

Thanks, everyone, for following this blog. I plan to continue blogging about training, racing, and my journey towards the 2012 London Olympics, so please check back and check in to learn about where you can read about my adventures! Thanks, too, for all the support and encouragement. None of us would be able to make it to the World Rowing Championships, to the Olympics, or even make it through a year of training at this level without a tremendous amount of support, encouragement, and love from those who understand what this dream is about. So…thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I can’t wait to keep going in pursuit of this dream, and thank you for helping me achieve it.

Go USA!

-Esther

Finals underway in NZ

Today saw some extremely tough racing conditions for crews across the board, and while all countries had a tough time of it, it was still disappointing for several of our boats. To be honest, while watching the racing, it seemed as though the conditions might have been unfair, an idea that was also mentioned by the race commentators. That thought was more upsetting than thinking about my teammates having to slog through the wind and whitecaps, finishing with times a minute slower than the heats and semis a few days ago.

However, our four ended up recovering from a pretty gruesome crab, doing a great job by not only getting back into contention for a medal but actually ending up on the medal stand. Our women's quad and men's four both raced extremely well and finished fifth in their respective A-finals. In the B-finals this morning, our men's quad raced a gutsy race against New Zealand, finishing a close second. The light women's double was edged at the line by China, also finishing second. Our light men's pair held onto third ahead of Spain. The light men's double had a tough race, finishing fifth. Our crews racing in their A/B semis this morning also had some difficult races: Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg finished fifth in the light men's single, and our men's double ran out of race course in trying to catch France. Both will race in the B-finals on Sunday.

Everyone's wondering a bit what the conditions are going to be like for tomorrow. We have several crews racing tomorrow: the morning starts off with the B-finals for the light men's four, men's pair, women's single, and men's single. Racing will begin at 11:53am local time, or 6:53pm Eastern/3:53pm Pacific. After the lunch break, we'll have the finals for the men's coxed pair, the women's light quad, and the men's light quad, and finally, the women's pair. Those races will begin at 2:03pm local time, or 9:53pm Eastern/6:53pm Pacific.

You can watch all racing live streaming on World Rowing (the link will take you to the pages to watch racing).

If you're following anyone's racing on the team, now is a great time to reach out to them and let them know that you're supporting them. I was so impressed with all of my teammates' performances today--racing so well in such challenging conditions. No matter how fit you are, having to race for a minute longer than you've trained for, plus dealing with whitecaps and huge wind gusts, takes a lot of guts, and I think the USA showed today that they were up to the challenge.

Let's hope for improving conditions for the next two days of finals, and good luck to everyone racing tomorrow!

One down, one to go in NZ!

So we finally got a chance to race yesterday, and got to line up in some great racing conditions and give it our first go in this lineup! We had a really solid piece, got some good things to work on for the final, and are looking forward to getting to race again on Sunday!

Today brought several more good races for our team: the W2x and W4x won their repechages, as did the M4-, and Julie Nichols in the LW1x advanced to the A-Final. We also saw some tough races, with the M4x, LW2x, and LM2x duking it out but winding up heading into the petites.

It's a definite change in atmosphere when racing starts. We've been hanging out training for a couple of weeks together, but starting Sunday, we all get wrapped up into our own racing, our own training, our own boats. It's nice to have dinner to socialize, but other than congratulating teammates on races well rowed, we start talking about the races themselves--and competition--a lot less. I guess it's because we spend enough time hashing out the results, good or bad, on our own and with our coaches and roommates and families, that meal times become more of a break from thinking about racing constantly.

I'm lucky to have both of my parents here to watch my racing this weekend. It's been nice to see them, because I usually only see them a few times a year, when we're training in California. It's also nice to meet teammates' parents and families. My boatmate's sister has been adventuring all over the North Island, and we've been vicariously living it up through her stories of bungy jumping and other craziness!

We're looking to log some good training and a lot of rest between now and our final on Sunday. Thanks to everyone who tuned in yesterday. I didn't realize that there wasn't video playing on the website, and it was just the "Live Results Viewer" broadcasting flags moving across the screen. There will indeed be live streaming video of the racing for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday finals on worldrowing.com and universalsports.com, though! A big storm coming through on Friday could change around race times, but I'll post the times for the US crews as soon as they're available.

Good luck to the US Adaptive crews racing their finals tomorrow: Ron Harvey, in the ASM1x Final B at 2:33pm (Wednesday, 9:33pm Eastern, 6:33pm Pacific), and our LTA4+ of Andrew Johnson, Eleni Englert, Emma Preuschl, Eric McDaniel, and Jennifer Sichel racing in the A Final at 3:55pm (Wednesday, 10:55pm Eastern, 7:55pm Pacific)!


P.S. Bonus tune added to the playlist from the last post: our boat's current new favorite, supplied by music guru and pair partner extraordinaire Elle Logan. Check it out at the link below:

Jolene (Remix)

Race Ready: 2010 NZ WRC Playlist

Just in time for our race tomorrow...the playlist has arrived! Culled from the top tunes on my teammates' playlists and some of my own favorites. I've linked them to the iTunes store when available, so they're right at your fingertips!

Be sure to watch all the racing on http://fisa.feedroom.com/. My race has been moved up to 11:35am tomorrow, so tune in Monday at 3:35pm Pacific and 6:35pm Eastern! Thanks for all the support, and good luck to all Team USA members racing tomorrow!

Race Ready: 2010 NZ WRC Playlist

1. Shark in the Water - V.W. Brown

2. How You Like Me Now - The Heavy

3. Heartbeat (Heartbeats 3.52) - Towa Tei

4. That's Not My Name - The Ting Tings

5. N.A.D.I.A. O.H. - Nadia Oh

6. In For the Kill - La Roux

7. Gigolo (ft. R. Kelly) - Nick Cannon

8. Candy Shop - 50 Cent & Olivia

9. Like a G6 (Disco Fries Remix) - Far East Movement

10. Club Can't Handle Me (ft. David Guetta) - Flo Rida

11. Gettin’ Over You (ft. Fergie & LMFAO) - Dave Guetta & Chris Willis

12. Party & Bullshit (Ratatat Remix) - Notorious B.I.G.

13. Ready for the Floor - Hot Chip

14. Lovesick - Lindstrøm & Christobelle

15. Hot (Ratatat Remix) - Missy Elliott

16. Crown on the Ground - Sleigh Bells

17. Tell ‘Em - Sleigh Bells

18. Messages - Planetakis

19. Take It All Off - Danko Jones

20. Airplanes (ft. Hayley Williams of Paramore) - B.o.B.

21. Right Hand On My Heart - The Whigs

22. Shut Up and Let Me Go - The Ting TIngs

23. D.A.N.C.E. - Justice

24. Give Me a Beat - Girl Talk

25. DARE (DFA Remix) - Gorillaz (**the last few minutes of this can get a little long, but the track is great!)

26. Time Won’t Let Me Go - The Bravery

27. Where Do I Begin - Chemical Brothers

28. Criminal - Fiona Apple

29. F**k You (Cee Lo Green Cover Version) - Tribute Mega Stars

30. Bag of Hammers - Thao Nguyen & the Get Down Stay Down

31. Cellphone’s Dead - Beck

32. Sleepyhead - Passion Pit

33. Beautiful Life - Gui Boratto

34. Memories (ft. Kid Cudi) - David Guetta

35. Giving Up the Gun - Vampire Weekend

36. Radioactive - Kings of Leon

37. Roll Away Your Stone - Mumford & Sons

38. Last Time - Paper Route

39. One Day - Matisyahu

40. Good Life - OneRepublic

41. Erase Me (ft. Kanye West) - Kid Cudi

42. Animal - Neon Trees

Happy Halloween and Racing Underway!

Greetings from the racecourse! It's been difficult to post the last couple of days because of our schedule and internet availability, so please excuse the hiatus.

Last night was Halloween here, and we had some good spirit in the dining hall for dinner. Anna Goodale (8+) is from Maine, and luckily our team tracksuit provided a good costume.

Sarah Trowbridge (4x) scared everyone with some extremely realistic vampire teeth.

Unfortunately, the waitstaff was unfazed, but we all enjoyed the shenanigans. Don Langford, head of USRowing, brought us some Halloween temporary tattoos, which the majority of the team is sporting today!

With only two of our crews able to race yesterday--Mike Nucci and Evan Tsourtsoulas in the LM2- finished third and will race in the repechage tomorrow, and Abby Broughton and Ursula Grobler winning their heat of the LW2x to advance to Wednesday's semifinal--racing today includes several more events, with things kicking off with our women's quad. Some rough water early in the race course put them down a bit, but they were able to come back into a solid third place finish, good prep for their repechage on Thursday.

We're off for the rest of the day, so there's a good deal more to come from this blog--check back to see our playlist and two video interviews, if the internet's working at the hotel!

Good luck to all my USA teammates racing today!

More training, more teams arriving!

We've been logging some miles and getting in some good race prep pieces at Karapiro over the last couple of days. One of my favorite things we do (as most other large squads do) is race pieces against one another on the race course. We've gotten to do a few against our W4- and W4x, and it's as close as we get to racing until next Tuesday--so we make the most of it. It's so much fun to race, and it makes us all faster--and it's just an awesome feeling, going down the course with all cylinders firing! I can't wait to start racing.

As of yesterday, nearly every federation has taken up residence at the course. The Dutch, Polish, and Swiss teams, who had been training near Taupo (a couple of hours south of the lake), have come up, and the New Zealand squad is training here now, too. The Dutch are also staying at our hotel, making it almost an entirely-rower residence: the US, Netherlands, France, Lithuania, and Serbia are all here!

I posted some photos from our warm-up run, which is a pretty, hilly jog through the New Zealand countryside. More videos to come today--since racing's just around the corner (the New Zealand daily paper actually had a 6-page insert about the World Rowing Championships!), it's time for some video interviews with US team members!