HECK of the North 2015 -- Weekend Recap

I wanted my weekends back so I quit my job. Smartly, I had a new one lined up, and it didn’t require me to work weekends…ever. Most things you miss out on while working the weekends you just can’t make up during the week because, well, they don’t have epic bike races during the week. Aside from Boston, most marathons or endurance running events happen on the weekend as well. As soon as we found out I landed a new gig we took to the interlinks and searched for a fun, challenging bike destination race. What we didn’t know at the time is that we had stumbled upon what was going to be one of the most fun times on two wheels that either one of us had experienced before.

HECK of the North is an extreme gravel cycling event in Two Harbors, just north of infamous Duluth, Minnesota. It has been around for 3 or 4 years now and has grown in popularity. Aside from hearing how tough the 100+ miles of racing was, we also heard musings of how it may be one of the more desolate and beautiful rides at the same time. Imagine northwoods weather in October, the leaves changing all sorts of fall colors, and that BIG lake that sits way below. Beauty and the beast at its best when it comes to nature. That wind whipping across the old gichi-gami, that cold-crisp air in the heart of the early morning, the smell of deep woods and burning brush. The sound of trees whispering, leaves rustling, wind howling, and nature calling. This ride isn’t normal, it’s awesome.

New for 2015 was the introduction of the HECK Half. What race director Jeremy Kershaw envisioned was taking all the great and challenging pieces of the Full HECK and compressing them into a shorter version. As far as I know, he did just that. Northern Minnesota gravel riding/racing is not like its bigger sister in the southern part of the state. It’s gnarly, it’s technical, it’s crisp…and it’s equally excellent.

So let’s recap the trip from the start.

Friday evening, after a long work week, we packed up the car with the necessities, racked the CX bikes and headed out of Rosemount toward the northshore. Then St. Paul happened and we stopped, a lot, in traffic…that was pretty lame. We slowly made our way up 35E and found ourselves stopping and going a lot along this corridor. Anxious to keep moving but ‘hangry’ from the work day we decided to pull off and grab a bite to eat at Chipotle. Generally Chipotle is a busy place. It should be too, cause it’s beautiful fresh and filling. This particular branch was very busy, and quite small…but we patiently waited for our ingestibles and then had a seat to enjoy, what we both decided, was one of the freshest and most flavorful Chipotle experiences to date. Ain’t no lie. Bellies full, we headed back to the freeway which seemed to have opened up a bit and we were on our way again.

Taking a quick step back into the week, it’s fair to mention that our original intent was to camp at Gooseberry State Park. We had all the camping necessities, tent, lantern, inflatable mattress, propane stove, coffee press, lighters, sleeping bags, etc. The day before we left I received a message from our friend Charlie…he offered up a spot at his cabin which sits just 10 miles north of the race start outside of Two Harbors. We thought about it for a bit then decided to take him up on the offer and we are so glad we did. Not only was the cabin awesome, but the company we shared was some of the best. Great guys and gals sharing stories of cycling, kid’s stuff, and life. Something AJ and I know just a little about.

We continued up 35 all the way to Two Harbors and made a quick left up county road 2. It was very dark, clouds laced the sky, and that smell of Lake Superior and the endless forest was gripped tightly by the night. We wound our way through some back country roads, onto some gravel back roads, then into a tight, weaving ‘no maintenance’ road that led us to Charlie’s hunting cabin. As we pulled in we were greeted with low lights, misty air, and the sound of laughter and story-telling. We quickly parked and headed into the cabin where Charlie and friends were reliving antics from last year’s HECK race. We met all the new faces, fumbled around with names, and grabbed some treats before heading out to the separate little cabin (coined the Love Shack) where AJ and I would be staying. We unpacked our stuff, laid out our riding gear for the next day, chatted a bit about the weather forecast, the route and our alarm time then quickly crawled into separate beds, no kidding, and fell right asleep.

The morning came fairly quickly. A brisk trip to the bushes and it was time to grab some coffee, brush the teeth, pull the cycling attire on then get the car started and warmed for our 15 minute trip to the staging area of the 2015 HECK of the North. The guys doing the 107 mile race had already left the cabin and headed in since they were also starting about 15 minutes before the HALF. We grabbed up our last few necessities and followed Bryon in towards town, he assured us he knew where he was going. A quick left off the county road and we were there. You could feel the buzz all of the sudden. It was about 25 minutes before The 100+ mile roll-out and we found a spot to park, found a spot to relieve ourselves, get our gear together, nutrition organized, tires pumped, and we were on our way to the start for the 55 mile race.

It was now 8:15am, we lined up with just under 100 other folks ready for the adventure that was ahead. Jeremy gave us a few cues, some fair warnings as to what was to come, and a wish of good luck as he sent us on our way. Straight out of the gates AJ was just in front of me and to the right a bit. Directly behind her was a young kid on a 29’er who accidentally ‘buzzed’ her rear wheel. For a moment the kid freaked out and lost his shit, over compensated his front wheel and hit the bricks. All the while, AJ thought it was me behind her playing some kind of joke. As she looked back to scold, she was relieved that I was still upright, and that it wasn’t me doing the buzzing, yet also felt bad for the young guy who hit the ground with his knee pretty damn hard. The beauty and peril of mass starts.

The first 7 miles was gentle gravel, fairly flat, no surprises. Actually, the gravel road may have been one of the best riding gravel I had ever been on. That first clip went by super quickly and the sights of huge pines and old maples along with the glow of golden leaves was spectacular. Then came our first turn. We went left and quickly off the smooth riding gravel into some thick woods that a much narrower passage led up and around with smooth rocks poking out in no specific pattern. This just became a whole new ball game. Not too far into this section were there riders pulled off to the side with repairs. Flats or seat slippage seemed to make up most of the issues. Having too much pressure, or not quite enough would serve unfortunate this quickly in the game. I had set my bike up with about 58 PSI as I was running 33.5mm tires with tubes. I set AJ up with a pressure closer to 52 since she was running a 38mm tubeless set-up. She got a much plusher ride for the day, and with less rolling resistance sans tubes, she was in heaven with the best of both worlds.

From here it’s tough to give you a good walk through, minds-eye idea of what the course was like. It switched up from great gravel, to old logging roads, to snowmobile trails with tall grass and tons of boggy goodness. Then out of the blue you’d come into a huge open area full of piles of logs and rocks, sand and mud, puddles and a shit-ton of shotgun shells. It was very odd. The knowledge that there were people there at some point recently, yet no one in sight for miles and miles made it kind of creepy and cool at the same time. Keep in mind there are parts, albeit very few, where we are riding with some of the 100 mile participants. You would never know it though, everyone looks the same at this point, they are just a few miles further into their journey, or maybe not. We come quickly to a spot where the cue card shows a left turn, around a ‘brown’ gate. There are 3 or 4 people there wondering if they are at the right spot, maybe a bit confused because their bike computer is a bit off. It’s relatively clear that this is the left turn at the brown gate though, because it’s the only left turn with a brown gate that we’ve seen all day and it’s where it says it should be. We ended up heading into this section after a long trip on awesome gravel…like 8 miles worth, but all literally uphill. My legs were fresh and AJ’s were too. From there we went for it. And never looked back. There were about 11 miles left. Mostly double track full of awesome rocks and narrow gravel paths on either side of a grassy center, yeah, that’s double track. False flats mostly all the way to the county road 2 crossing and back to the staging area and the finish line.

It was pretty underwhelming, the finish area, considering (but not caring) that we had come in 14^th and 15^th place overall out of 75 riders in the HECK Half….and all of the 100+ riders were still out except a few who had DNF’ed at this point and found their way back to the finish. One of the guys from the cabin, Ted, was a favorite for top 5, but a double flat and some wonky tube put his day to rest after 60 miles, so we sat with him around the fire, kept it stoked, and put wagers on who might win. We had finished in just over 4 hours and that was kind of our expectation going in to this. We were just happy to be a part of it, and although we were fine being done with the ride part of our day, we found ourselves really excited to being hanging out anticipating the riders coming in off the 100.

As stated, we sat around the bonfire for quite some time, ate chips, drank diet cola and talked about who may win. There was a group of about 5 people that could win if in position to do so coming into the finish. 3 of the five were all Metal riders from St. Cloud area and Revolution Bike & Ski or a friend who happened to ride for and work for Salsa. In the mix was a young phenom, forget his name now, but at 16 years for age, he could apparently mash the gears. Rumor had it that Ben Doom had flatted and was off the front. The lead group at the checkpoint consisted of over 20 riders, so at this point it was anyone’s game potentially. The front group, whether 1 or 10, was thought to come in somewhere around 6 hours. This put things in perspective for me, and I couldn’t believe they would ride that so fast. Six hours came and went, but not much later in the day (about 6:20 hours) we watched one, two, and three come in within seconds of one another. Ben Doom sealed the victory after a ‘flat, bridge, pull, ride harder than everyone’ kind of day. Charlie Schad wasn’t far behind for a second place finish, followed by the young kid, Bjorn, for a solid 1, 2, 3 punch. Sean from Salsa was then fourth after blowing up somewhere in the later part of the race.

The riders trickled in from there. 1 by 1 they finished. Some looked fresh, others looked tattered. The favorite finish was our friend Ryan Tarpening with a bunny hop leap over the finishing tape on his HUGE Ice Cream Truck. All smiles. We hung out and waited for more people we knew. Specifically we were waiting on Patti Schmidt-Iverson, whose hubby Al had finished a bit after the leaders, pushing himself to the limits of sanity.  Patti soon joined the ranks of HECK 100 finishers and rolled in with Bonnie Moebeck. Both great riders and good friends. 

Riders kept coming in, and we decided it was time to go get some food and beverages. Patti and Al wanted to meet up at Blackwoods in Two Harbors for some appetizers, so we headed south and got a little grub. We had already planned on meeting up with Charlie and Bryon later that night at a little place called Dixie. They do up some mean burgers, an all you can eat fish fry, and some other original (and non-original) menu items. Dixie was back toward the cabin, right off county road 2…so it was a great place to meet up, share tales of the day and just kick back and relax while watching the locals. Angie Jane had an Alaskan Salmon salad and I tried out a burger; cream cheese, jalapenos, and bacon. Wow, it was great. We ordered up a couple diet cokes and they came in the biggest cups ever seen, it was great to not have to call over the server every few minutes for a refill. After dinner we were ready to get back to the cabin and start up a fire in the wood burning stove. On the way out of Dixie we spied a case full of pie…promptly asking the server what kind of pies they were, finding out they were fresh made caramel apple pie, we told her we’d take all 3 along with a slice of spice cake to go. Boom.

Back to the cabin, unloaded some wet gear and the pie, headed in for a quick bath to wash the day away (did I mention I still had my bibshorts on) then sat around the fire catching up, bonding in the woods, and enjoying homemade apple caramel pie and a side of spice cake.

Night came and went fairly quickly and we woke with the morning sun. A few things to get organized, cleaned up, and put away and we were again off. Saying our goodbyes to Charlie and Bryon, along with the trusty northwoods cabin…we hit the open rode and made our way to Duluth for the rest of the morning. A quick bite to eat at Little Angie’s Cantina on Canal Park, a cup of java at the local Caribou and a walk along Lake Superior shore. On our way back to the car I stopped in to the little bottling shop called Fizz. Grabbed up a couple new root beers and some Twizzler Nibs and we were on our way again. This time straight home.

The entire trip was 48 hours from trip start to our arrival back home. It went by too quickly and we were already on to the next thing. We washed up the CX bikes, unloaded our gear and headed out for a ride through UMore Park in Rosemount. After 20 more miles of gravel and some dinner, we were calling it a weekend. And it was one of the most fun one’s we’ve had in a while.

Sidenote:
This year I rode the HECK on my Felt F3x (which coincidentally was ridden here year one by David Thompson):

Next year I would love to ride it on this (or the like):

Salsa Cutthroat

Cheers to Obscure Days....