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

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!

Afternoon off...

This morning, we did a bit of pulling, which was really nice for getting to stretch our legs for the first time since arriving in New Zealand. I think that that's when it really starts to register for me. You'd think that "I'm in New Zealand for the World Rowing Championships" would hit home after the 30+ hours of traveling were over and we officially arrived...or maybe during our first trip down the racecourse. I can't speak for others, but when we start doing things that feel like racing, that's when that awesome feeling hits: "I'm here in NZ, racing to represent the USA, and I'm ready to GO!" Now, there's just a slight, week-long delay before we actually get to head up to the start and toe the line with the other kids in our heat...

We had the afternoon off, but this seemed to coincide with jetlag hitting a bit. I was hoping to make it to a sheep farm (I hear that New Zealand has a few of those?) with some of my teammates, but I just did some work and napped instead, like most of the team. I've put in a request to everyone here to send me their top training tunes for this trip, so one of the next few posts will be the official USA 2010 WRC playlist! Get excited...

Successful First Day in NZ

After our epic journey, we landed safely and successfully in the Auckland International Airport. To be honest, the time zone change has been a little easier than I thought it might be, although I might be eating my words later. 80ish athletes, coaches, and team managers managed to make it through in one piece, with no fines (Immigration is notoriously strict here, with $400 fines levied if you don't declare monitored goods such as fruit or nuts) and no lost baggage. The WRC management team has been awesome, shepherding us around the security queues in the airport and really making sure that everything is taken care of.

After the 90-minute bus ride from the airport to Hamilton, the city our hotel is in, we dropped off our bags and grabbed some lunch before heading out to the course. It's about a 40-minute bus ride from our hotel to the course--mostly residential sections and farmland. I have yet to see any sheep, but there are plenty of cows around!

The course is beautiful--very picturesque and huge. Nearly all of the international courses I've raced on have been man-made, and the lake is huge. There are also huge grandstands, a huge staging area, and a huge warm-up area on the course--New Zealand is definitely doing the World Rowing Championships in a big way!

More to come tomorrow--I'll hopefully be able to get some video interviews with teammates and get the slideshow to cooperate. Thankfully, the internet here is working well, so I'll be able to update this more regularly than my Lucerne blog! For now, though, it's bedtime, so I'm signing off!

Welcome to Esther Lofgren’s 2010 World Rowing Championship blog!

Welcome to my New Zealand World Rowing Championships blog! I’m Esther Lofgren, five-time US National Team member, and a member of the women’s eight. I’m posting this blog with the help of USRowing, the national governing body of rowing here in the US of A. You can see their coverage of regattas, videos, live webcasts, athlete bios, and much more at http://www.usrowing.org/.

I’ll be writing about our training leading up to the WRCs, what New Zealand’s like (most of us have never been!), and all the excitement of racing, both on the water and behind the scenes. I blogged for USRowing at the Lucerne World Cup in July (you can see that blog here: http://usrowinglucerne.blogspot.com/), and this time around, I hope to include much more media—short video interviews with teammates in every boat, photos, and (back by popular request) iTunes-linked music playlists!

Thanks for checking out my blog! If you want to see more blogs like this from rowers on the team, please show your support by logging in to follow this blog. Comments and feedback are absolutely appreciated!

Go USA!

-Esther