First up, a recap of the last day of the 2026 Tour de Finn, Saturday March 6th. At the Ski North Ultra (for which I've already written a way too long post), Craig led the charge for the Seniorits with an impressive 5th place finish! Brock wasn't far behind in 9th, and Erik rounded out the 3-per-gender scoring in 19th. Not placing for the team, Ben finished 25th and Dave Folland, a teamless Vakaver, was 28th. I was the lone Vakava woman in 6th of 16 women who finished. I know at least four who were DNF and I'm guessing there were many others of both genders but they don't show up in the results.
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| Brock sporting his Ski North Ultra medal at the end of the 100 km. Photo: Tracy Lundberg |
Meanwhile, those whippersnappers apparently thought 100 km was a bit too far but had their comeuppance at the Great Bear Chase during an epic snowstorm. For the Juniorits, Sam was 2nd in the 50 km skate followed by another podium finish with Josh. In the Seniorit camp, Mary Beth scored the most points on the day between her age bonus and finishing 4th. Artie skied the skiathlon which was not "the" points race so got an extra 20 for us old farts. Bonnie, racing for the young guns despite her age, raced the 24 km classic and also got 20 points. She finished second overall and really crushed the field. Similarly, Dave Christopherson powered through the 24 km skate, finishing 24th of 179 competitors at age 75+.
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| Mary Beth at the 50 km Skate at the 2026 Great Bear Chase. Notice the snow caked on the upper front of her bib. Photo: brockit |
So now the much anticipated 2026 finale. I want to shout out to skinnyski.com for their 2000's Skinnyski Series which no doubt inspired the Tour de Finn. I was sad to see their series end but grateful for Finn Sisu, Allie Rykken, Karl Holub, and I'm sure a few others who revived a Midwest race series in the form of the Tour de Finn. Now in it's third season, the goal is to increase participation at races throughout the Midwest. My first Tour de Finn race this year was the Riverview Loppet which seemed a bit overwhelmed by the participation. On the other hand, the Finlandia, which has the plight of being the weekend before the Birkie, remained underwhelmed.
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| Vakava skiers at Finlandia minus me plus Devin of Finn Sisu/Homeplace. Photo: Craig selfie thanks to his long arms. |
Let's dig into the team scores. After Vakava lost to the Yams in the 2023-2024 season fielding two approximately equal teams, we stacked our most frequent racers last year to take the overall 2024-2025 win. This year we went with a different strategy - pitting the youngters (the Juniorits) against the old fogies (the Seniorits) hoping this would encourage more Vakers to race. Perhaps we could say that some of us took the bait more than others.... more on this later when we get to the individual standings. Full results here.
In the end, the Juniorits prevailed over the Seniorits by some whopping 425.56 points. We finished 2nd and 3rd respectively. Alas, the Juniorits couldn't melt the TCSC Icy Insurgents (that's what they get for calling us 40 year olds geriatric) who won by a margin of 310.26 points. Had Vakava pooled our highest men's and women's scorers into one team, this would have resulted in some sick domination so perhaps it's good for the ski community that we didn't do such. Despite our senescent status, us Seniorits had over 1,100 points more than any other team.
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| The final scores (yes, the screenshot does not have all the races because I couldn't scroll over). 13 teams total registered. |
Now onto some Tour de Finn logistics as we head towards the individual results. Shout out to Ian who was the only skier to do eight races of ten possible (it was impossible to do both the Ski North Ultra and the Bear Chase - you can disagree with me on this one but you'd need a plane and to do the short distances at both events). This meant that Ian spent 47 hours driving 2,540 miles, and this consolidates that between the Noquemanon and Mount Ashwabay race he stayed in the UP. It doesn't include his short drive to Wirth for the City of Lakes Loppet or his slightly longer drive to Battle Creek for the 50 km. Now, when you add in that he also went to the Birkie, had he not stayed that week in the UP, and had he gone for the 30 extra bonus points to complete nine races at the Great Bear Chase, that increases to 80 hours of driving for 4,190 miles over eight weeks. Perhaps this explains why I shouldn't get on my fellow codgers for being such stick-in-the-muds and not racing more. They do say with age comes wisdom.
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| Writing of age and wisdom, after taking 3rd overall last year, Eva decided she couldn't race so much this year. She did do the classic at Mora though for the first time ever since it was the points race. Photo: Craig |
This year I really committed to the Tour de Finn. Why? Because I'm competitive and didn't want those little shavers to lay the hammer down on us geezers. It also helped that the Mora 42 km classic was "the" points race this year. But I wasn't completely committed - Erik and I missed two weekends of racing in January to go to a conference/ski vacation in Colorado. But the result of all this Tour de Finning business plus the Colorado ski trip meant that from the weekend just after Christmas through the Ski North Ultra we spent 90 hours driving 5,320 miles. Of ten weekends, we were home for just two of these and one of them was Mora.
Not surprisingly, two TCSC Icy Insurgents led the standings for individual men, followed by Juniorit Josh in third. Seniorit Craig was just off the podium in 4th but won his age class. Despite his valiant effort, Juniorit Ian ended the Tour in 5th. Next came two Seniorits, Brock in 8th and Erik in 13th followed closely by Juniorit Sam in 14th. Rounding out the Seniorits were Ben in 21st and Artie in 30th. Arguably we should've bumped Artie for Andy who finished 27th but their difference was a mere eight points. Leif ended up 36th and McEwan 58th to close out the Juniorit men, with Zach 34th and Dave Christopherson 54th. So we could've picked our teams a bit better with those who ended up scoring the most points, but these last guys weren't separated by much and it wouldn't have been enough to catch the Icy Insurgents keeping with our Seniorit and Juniorit teams.
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| The top 19 men in the Tour de Finn 2025-2026 |
In regard to the women, Vakava only had ten women who raced all season so each team got five. Laura ended the Tour in 1st place!!!! Icy Insurgents came in 2nd and 4th but I secured 3rd place. Not bad for an old lady:)- For the Juniorits Gabby went 6th despite only doing four races with Elena 21st, Steph 41st, and Bonnie 76th. And for the Seniorits, Eva was 13th, Mary Beth 15th (impressive considering she only did two points races but got an additional 40 points for doing non-point races at Ashwabay and Mora), Adrienne 28th, and Maria 179th.
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| And the top 19 women in the Tour de Finn 2025-2026 |
So the big takeaway, well as always, it helps to be a woman. It also helps to target the specific points races. And, it does help to be fast. Otherwise, do I have regrets? Am I exhausted? No and no. It sure made winter go by in blur, we had some fun times carpooling and lodging with our teammates AND we skied some new races and trails. But, I am certainly rethinking next year. This was a bit too much travel and it would be nice to stay a few days at some of these venues and ski some more natural snow in the woods.
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| Skiing the single track trails at Mount Ashwabay the day after the race. Photo: Craig |
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