World Championships: Heat Win!

Post #62

Bled, Slovenia - Julie and I came away with a win in the heat on Monday, meaning that we qualified directly through to the semifinals. Based on the new (and potential Olympic) race schedule, the semis are on Saturday and the finals are on Sunday. Top 3 boats from the semi will qualify for the A final and everyone else will head to the B final.

Go USA!

Packed practice lanes

Off the start in Monday's heat (thanks to row2k!)

Finish line and grandstands from above (thanks to row2k!)

World Championships: Arrival in Slovenia

Post #61

Bled, Slovenia - We arrived here on Saturday morning after three flights and a bus ride from the airport. The nine hour time change from California has taken a few days to adjust to, but we're feeling better by the day. The venue here is great; it definitely ranks as one of the most gorgeous places I've ever rowed. There is a castle at the 500 meter mark and an island with a church at the 1500 meter mark. The pictures do a better job of describing the scene here:

With 26 entries in our event, we will be racing many times over the course of the eight day regatta. This year's Worlds are extra important for everyone: they mark the first step in the process to qualify for the Olympics. Every Olympic event has their own qualifying standards. For ours (LW2x), the top eight countries qualify...that's countries, not the specific athletes in the boats. The athlete qualification happens next year.

As mentioned before, I am one of several athletes writing for the row2k Worlds blog. Between all of us, there's probably more info than you'd need about how the US and Canadian teams are doing over here!

That's all for now - more to come later as we approach racing.

Pre-Worlds Stuff and Website Launch

Post #60

Oakland, California - My pre-Worlds training here is wrapping up and we're getting ready to head out to Slovenia. Margot and Paul (with puppy Samuel) have been letting me stay with them in California. Margs and I go way back: we rowed together in high school and became best friends. We both went to Wisconsin and rowed for the lightweight team there, often sitting next to each other in the 8. We also lived together for most of college, which means that I also basically lived with Paul once they started dating junior year. They are great people and are like family to me.

Row2k has asked me to be one of their National Team bloggers while at Worlds. I'll be contributing to their Worlds blog section throughout racing - keep an eye out! I'm honored to be one of the athletes contributing to this and I'm excited to see what all of us can put together. Also, since row2k is so awesome, they try to post a gallery of pre-Worlds training photos for each boat that will be competing. The galleries are posting this week, and ours was just put up the other day. The photos below were taken on Saturday morning.

Last but not least, I have (hesitantly) launched a website. I have never wanted to be an athlete who flaunts my rowing career, but I have wanted to keep friends/supporters in the loop. Hence, the website: kristinhedstrom.com. It was created as a result of two things: people wanting an easier way to stay in the loop (and find this blog's URL - it's easier to remember my name than this long blog address!) and people wanting a simpler way to help support me financially. For those of you who have donated: my sincerest thanks. The fact that you understand the financial burden that following a dream like this comes along with and are willing to help out means so much to me.

Thank You, Marin!

Post #59

Oakland, California - This morning Julie and I took a field trip to the Marin Rowing Association. They hosted us for a practice and let us do some pieces against their boats. There were plenty of playful challenges ("I'm gonna crush you!"), breaking the rules (starting the race before the coaches said "go"), and just generally having a good time. There were lots of laughs between the pieces...and sometimes during them. It was fun to get out there and have a stress-free, fun time to break up our training cycle. After the pieces, we grabbed some coffee with the team and spent time getting to know them better. They are a great group: really interested in what we're doing, really positive about their own rowing and upcoming National Championships, and ready to root us on from afar at the end of August. It means so much to have their support as we prepare for Worlds.

Reenacting our Lucerne podium photo with one of the Marin rowers!

When we're not doing pieces in Marin, we've been hard at work preparing for Worlds, which starts three weeks from today. It feels like time is flying. We thought it would feel like we were back in the U.S. for a long time between the last World Cup and when we leave for the World Champs, but our time here is almost over already. Practices have been going well though, and we're making changes to ensure we're as fast as possible in Slovenia.

After trials ended last week, the entire US roster for Worlds was set. We'll know our competitors for Worlds in about a week. More to come later!

Cali

Post #58

Berkeley, California - Two weeks have already flown by since the last World Cup of the 2011 season. Although I'm all adjusted to US living now, it was a bit of a culture shock during the first few days. The biggest thing for me was being able to understand what everyone here is saying and easily communicate with them. No more games of charades to try to get them to understand what you are talking about! Beyond that, Julie and I joked about how grocery shopping takes about a third of the time here as it did in Europe. We know where everything in the store is and can read all the labels, so it's a cinch.

So we are training in California again. It's a little strange to be back. Last time we were here (in March), things were different. We were in singles, training alongside each other and racing each other every day in preparation for the first NSR. Now it's a whole different story. With a good handful of domestic and international racing under our belts, we're now focused 100% on Worlds. It's still five weeks away, which is actually kind of nice. The World Cups were so close together: by the time we recovered from one, we essentially only had a week and a half of solid work before we started our race prep for the next. Now we've got time to get in good training and be ready to go for the big one in August.

Sunset from the plane. Time to go back to the USA.

Wrapping it up in Lucerne

Post #57

Lucerne, Switzerland - Julie and I raced to a third place finish in yesterday's A final behind the reigning World Champion Canadians and the British crew that beat us back at World Cup I. It was a close race all the way down the course, with us and Great Britain constantly trying to inch ahead of each other. Despite the fact that they nicked us in the final strokes, we were happy to earn ourselves a bronze medal.

Even more exciting, though, is the fact that this bronze, along with our medals from the other World Cups, made us the overall points winners for the 2011 World Cup season. We are the first U.S. crew to ever win a points trophy, and we couldn't be happier about it.

Video of the race (under "Video Archive" and then LW2x)

USRowing press release

We've got a long few days of travel ahead of us as we finally head back to the US. It has been over seven weeks of training and racing in Europe and as much as I love it here, I'm ready to get back to the good ole US of A!

Yellow Jerseys and Points Trophy!

Great Britain, Canada, and USA

World Cup III

Post #56

Lucerne, Switzerland - Yup, it's back to racing again, and this time we're at the last stage of the 2011 World Cup series. Ask any international rower and what their favorite racecourse is and chances are they'll say Lucerne. When I was in college, I remember hearing Erik and other former national team rowers talk about this place like it was a magical. When I came here for the first time in 2009, I finally understood why. The course is on the Rotsee, a body of water framed by green hillsides high enough to keep the wind from churning up the water. It's also just wide enough and long enough for a standard course, so the water stays flat almost all the time. This makes for fair and fast racing. Every so often, you'll see a train go by along the water or hear cowbells clanging on the hillsides, so you really feel like you're having a classic Swiss rowing experience. Even though I've raced here before, it's just as amazing the second time around.

This morning on the Rotsee. Getting ready for early practice!

As if the rowing venue wasn't perfect enough, the Rotsee is just up the hill from Lucerne, which is an incredible place. It has cobblestone streets, old buildings, castles on the hillsides, gorgeous Lake Lucerne (with plenty of swimmers, paddle boaters, and swans) and a canal winding through the city.

Lake Lucerne in the background and the canal through the city.

Canal

Ok, on to the rowing stuff. This event is huge. There are over 900 athletes racing this weekend from fifty nations so you can imagine how packed the boatyard and course (during practice times) are. We've been out for a few practices in the last few days and since I'm sitting in the bow seat, I'm responsible for steering our double. In normal training (i.e. places with not much boat traffic at 6 am), you can turn around to see where you're going every couple minutes. Here, it's often every couple strokes. There's a posted traffic pattern but different countries have different interpretations of it so I have to be ready for anything and everything. Add in the fact that everyone speaks different languages and you get some "interesting" situations. It's a challenge, but always fun to get out there.

Entries are in for our event and this looks to be the most competitive of the World Cups so far, with several notable additions: Canada (reigning World Champs), Australia, and New Zealand, among others. Based on the 24 boats entered, we will have this schedule and progression:

Friday AM: Heats. Winner (out of 6 boats) advances to the semifinal. All other boats to the repechage.

Friday PM: Repechages. Top 2 boats (out of 5) advance to the A/B semifinal, bottom 3 to the C/D semifinal.

Saturday: Semifinals. In the A/B semi, top 3 boats (out of 6) advance to the A final, bottom 3 boats to the B final. Same goes for the C/D semi.

Sunday: Finals.

As with the other World Cups, it's a pretty compressed schedule, but that gives us lots of times down the course. We've gotten so much great international experience this summer and this will be our last test before Worlds in August. Results will be posted here, and there will likely be live video feed on Sunday (link will be posted there).

Go USA!

World Cup II Gold!

Post #55

Hamburg, Germany - Julie and I won World Cup gold yesterday in Germany and became the overall World Cup leaders in our event. It was the first international gold medal for each of us, and we could not be more pleased with our result. We're about to head back to Switzerland but I wanted to pass along the race recap links:

- Video of the race (click on Hamburg - LW2x thumbnail)

- Results sheet

- World Rowing press release (scroll halfway down)

Podium: Germany, USA, Denmark

World Cup II

Post #54

Hamburg, Germany - So here we are, the city where the most recent E. Coli outbreak began. With reports from German health officials that the infection threat has been removed, the second World Cup is all systems go.

Starting blocks at the Hamburg race course. Still that light out at 9:15 pm!

A quick look at the entry list for our event shows that we'll be lining up against many of the same crews that were in Munich, but also a bunch of new ones. There are sixteen crews entered, and the most notable addition is the German double. The Germans won a silver at last year's World Championships in New Zealand. Unfortunately, the E. Coli threat caused the entire British team to pull their entries, as well as the Dutch double that was supposed to race in our event. We were really looking forward to racing them again. Still, there will be some great competition here and we're excited to get back on the race course.

We'll be in a heat tomorrow morning with Norway, Korea, Sweden, and Switzerland at 11:18 am (5:18 am US Eastern time). Top 2 advance directly to semis and the rest go to the afternoon reps. Results are here, on World Rowing's website. Select class: "LW2x." Go USA!

Church Bells and Cowbells

Post #53

Switzerland - What a month it has been. Julie and I started rowing the double together in late April and within about five weeks, we've qualified the boat in the US, come overseas to Vienna, then gone to Munich, and qualified ourselves for the World Championships team. Phew!

We've been training in Switzerland since World Cup I. It has been the perfect place to unwind from the first batch of racing, get some training in, and figure out logistics for the rest of the summer. Switzerland is an incredible country and every day we talk about how lucky we are to be here. We're rowing on a aqua blue lake surrounded by perfectly groomed hillsides, cows with cowbells, and stunning snow-capped Alps in the distance. I could get used to this!

Looking down the buoyed course on the lake. I don't think I've ever rowed in a place this gorgeous.

Perfect hillsides

Alps at dusk

A few other impressions of Switzerland:

1. Everything is small, except for the mountains. Our "family size" milk is smaller than a half gallon, I haven't eaten off of a regular sized spoon (mini spoons only) since we arrived, and the washing machine only fits a few days worth of workout clothes. The smallness also applies to fruit, refrigerators, cars, docks, and - perhaps most alarming - the width of two-way streets.

Mini everything. Penny for scale.

2. Every town has at least one church whose bells chime every fifteen minutes. Our town's church also does a big bell song at 7 am and at noon. Up and at 'em!

3. Each town has one or two amazing bakeries. When we row by the town centers in our morning workouts, the fresh bread and pastry smells waft across the lake. Kind of nauseating during practice - and hard to resist afterwards!

4. Much to our occasional frustration, the Swiss actually take lunch breaks. Every store in town closes for a solid hour and a half in the middle of the day. We also tried to get some groceries on June 2, only to find out (after we were standing in front of the store's locked doors of course) that it's a national holiday. And if any national holiday falls on a Thursday, they just take that Friday off too and make it one big four-day weekend.

5. German is the main language spoken where we are, which means we're in the land of long words. They take a phrase like "central train station" and smoosh it all together to make one big word. Julie took a year and a half of German in high school, and (lucky for me and Ken), she actually remembers it. We'd be lost without her!

World Cup II starts next week in Hamburg, Germany. Much more info to come as we lead up to it, so check back to follow along.

Training in Switzerland