Ross emerging from the wilderness, Knife River crossing, Heck 2023. Photo Josh Kowaleski

In 2019, we introduced a special award for the season called The Flight. This award recognized racers that completed all three Heck of the North Productions events that year; Le Grand du Nord 100 mile, The Heck Epic 220 mile and The Heck of the North 100 mile. Then the world got all weird.

This year we were wacky enough to offer four Heck Productions events; Le Grand du Nord, The Fox Bikepacking Race, The Wolf Bikepacking Race and The Heck of the North. With pandemics, floods and wild fires, we just do not have the audacity to assume all of our events will actually happen in a given year anymore. But, as luck would have it (with some really amazing people, too!), we pulled them all off in 2023.

When we went through our lists of finishers, we felt not only obliged, but also honored to recognize a certain rider this year. And that special person is Duluth’s Ross Fraboni. Ross completed Le Grand du Nord 100, The Fox Bikepacking Race (120 mile), The Wolf Bikepacking Race (330 mile) and The Heck of the North 100 with the grace and style that none only Fraboni can produce. For that effort and dedication, we are awarding him The Flight Award; a three night stay at Bearskin Lodge, way up on the Gunflint Trail. Thank you Ross (and thanks to our sponsor friends at Bearskin Lodge!)

Here’s another bit of Ross Fraboni trivia that we especially admire. He is, by our calculations, the only rider who has completed every Heck 100 race since our beginning in 2009 (that’s 14 of them.) And not only finish, but usually within the top 10. Holy smokes.

We also want to give a huge congrats to our participants who finished three Heck Productions events this year: Kevin Kaiser (who almost got the Flight award, too) Mary Gorski, Gina McCafferty, Elana Bantle, Devin Koob, Rob Weum, Patrick Pawlowski, Eric Storbakken and Alan McEwan. These are some seriously hearty Heck racers and we appreciate your dedication to our events. Thank you!

This month, we will be looking at our notes from the events over coffee and wine and maybe both. We will look at what worked and what needs tuning. We will be keeping it as Heck worthy as we can. We will finalize dates for events, too. Stay tuned for all of this and more.

And if you have not read this by Avesa, Jeremy Got Sick So Avesa Took Charge and Slam Dunked The Biggest Heck of the North Ever please do. Our friend Josh at The Nxrth does good work.

Until then, Ride the Good Line

Jeremy