Estonia!

Sunday morning around 11am, the team and I packed up our things at the Scandic and started our Journey to Otepaa. We drove for about 1.5 hours into Helsinki where we caught the ferry that would take us across to Tallinn Estonia. The ride on the ferry was about 2 hours long, during which time we had some lunch in one of the cafeteria places and explored what the ferry had to offer. The most noticeable difference between this ferry and the ones that I have traveled on in Canada was that in every shop, or place to buy anything on this ferry (and there were a lot), you could buy alcohol. The supermarket was pretty much 60% booze, 35% chocolate and 5% random stuff.

The most exciting part of our ferry adventure was probably when we almost got trapped in the landing on the garage floor. It was that little room that separates the garage from the stairwell, and in our case, the elevator. So myself, Russell, Andy, Janelle and Patrick all piled out of the elevator into this room, where there were two big blue doors, one on each side. So after the elevator closed and left, we concluded that we couldn't get the doors open, and then we saw the sign that said the elevator was out of order. So at that point we all just kinda looked at each other with slightly concerned looks on our faces. Being slightly claustrophobic, I thought for sure I was going to start freaking out, but to my surprise and relief, I didn't. We pushed the elevator button in the hope that the sign was wrong, and after a minute or so of thinking we were trapped, the elevator came back. Once we got off the ferry, it was about a 3.5 hour drive from Tallinn to Otepaa. We arrived at the Arula Motel, where will are staying for our time in Otepaa, around 7:30pm.

We got up for a slow, relaxed morning yesterday and left for the race site at 10:30am. As I predicted, when we drove into the race site and I saw the Stadium and all the Nations flags, I started to get a little nervous. Unbelievably excited, but a little bit nervous. I skied for 1.5 hours on all of my race courses, and that just doubled my excitement to race. The trails are incredible, I did some zone 3 and 4 on the 3.3km loop that I'll be racing on for the 10km tomorrow and it was sssooo much fun. Some awesome climbs and a crazy fast downhill, it's going to be fun.

Yesterday afternoon I went for an easy recovery run with Russell and we discovered a small downhill ski centre just down the road from our accommodations. After dinner last night we had a team meeting where we all got our Athlete bibs and accreditation which will get us onto the race trails and into the facilities at the race site. And we get to keep these bibs, so I have my first souvenir from the trip!

The Junior Men (myself included) aren't heading up to the race site until 1pm this afternoon, so I'm going to head out for a run now just to keep my legs feeling good. I have some pictures from the ferry and our first day in Otepaa up on my facebook page now, so feel free to give those a look. I've been trying to get some new pictures up there every day to keep everyone back home up to date. With races starting tomorrow it's going to be a little harder to find time for pictures, but I'll do my best. I'm guessing my next post won't be until after my race tomorrow, for those of you who check back here frequently.

So until then, cheers!