Tour de Finn | Skadi's Chase Recap & December Updates
- Posted on
- By Allie Rykken
- Posted in Tour de Finn
The Tour de Finn kicked off in a big way this past weekend with the Minnesota Nordic Opener: Skadi’'s Chase 8K skate race. The overall course was up to 2K, so four laps of speedy madness, and while temps came up over the freezing point, the course was in good shape for a morning race. While the results and points don't really start stacking up until after the second race, it's fun to get that first race in and dust off the old pain chambers. Even remembering a pre-race routine looks like (where are my boots?), which tested me frankly at a 8:00 AM start, was a refresher. Big thanks to Elm Creek and Three Rivers Park Reserve for getting us started! The entire Minnesota Ski Opener is a fun and festive event, with lessons and demos and loon awards, and maybe one of the few overall events that bring high school and citizen racers together.
Looking ahead, our next race on the lineup is the Hiito relays on January 1, an inaugural relay race put on by Finn Sisu at Battle Creek. It will be two person skate relays of 2.5 kilometers, twice (10k total per team). If you want to know a secret, you'll note that this is actually a pretty good points bucket as the only relay race of the season. General points will be spread out depending on the overall race size and the teams will still be allowed the top six highest points earners, however we will hand out points to women's teams, men's teams, and mixed genders teams, so, maybe it's the holiday spirit, but we're handing out more points than usual. You don’t need to be on a team with your TDF team, either.
You may have noticed we have a few more races on the calendar this year. We have a couple of double-header weekends. This is in part due to all the canceled races from last year - we're adding a little buffer in. But mostly there are just so many fun races, it was a hard time not adding a whole bunch to the calendar.
Please note that we snuck in one additional race to the end of the season: the Ski North Ultra opened registration this past weekend. It is a new classic-only race near Lutsen, featuring 100 km(!!), 46 km and 22 km courses, and will utilize the Norpine Trail system Cascade River State Park and Valley Creek. The trails are a mix of classic/skate, double-track and single-track trails and feature all of the beauty that you'd expect from the North Shore.
With that, call your friends, round up your teams! The deadline for team registration is January 6th. We would love to get a ton of teams this year. You don't have to be a part of an official club, just call up your old high school teammates or college pals or the guy down the block that skis sometimes and submit your team here. Shout out to Team Birkie, TSCS Icy Insurgents, YAM BAM Thank you Ma’am! (reigning champs), and the Flying Fungi from Yuggoth for submitting their teams!
Results from the MN Opener here. TDF points will come out following the Hiito Relays :) And thanks to Skinnyski for the photo coverage and just dignifying our sport in general!
See you all on the trails and here's to a whole pile of snow coming soon!