2014 Triangle Fat Tire Festival

The Triangle Fat Tire Festival was a fun weekend of mountain bike racing and group riding, in June of 2014, at Lake Crabtree County Park. Here is a recap and race results. You can view more photos on the archived meetup pages for Saturday and Sunday.

National Trails Day

We had 30+ people show up for National Trails Day on Saturday, from TORC and the mountain biking community as well from REI. We all love the trails at Lake Crabtree County Park, whether biking or hiking them. Matt Jenkins (LCCP trail coordinator), provided us with this cool time lapse video and photo compilation.

REI was back on Sunday the 8th, and provided a Novara 29er mountain bike to drive TORC membership. REI also supported the Lake Crabtree Time Trial with stacked prizes 3 deep for the race categories as well as swag for the TORC membership drawings.

It’s hard to focus on where to start with so much support coming in from different directions and at different times through out the day but let’s start with the LCCP TT.

Sarwat and her group of volunteers pulled together a spectacular race event to accompany the whole festival.  We counted 71 racers who came to have fun racing and to support the race program as well as support the trail building & maintenance program. 

A big thanks to Paul Harwood and his team from REI for supporting this first ever Crabtree Time Trial Race.  And a big thanks to Susan, Beth, Laura, Trina, and Matt for helping with registration and timing. Thanks to Jim H. for the pop-up, setting up the cones for the racers in line, and taking down the pop-up and table (thanks John L.). And to Goldfish for helping me setup the pop-up and with finishing marking the course with tape on Sunday and Matt Watts for marking the course with me on Saturday. And thanks to John, Cindy, Robert P. and John H. for cleaning up the course, and of course thanks to Drew Cade and his staff at LCCP for the cones and making it possible to put on race here.

Sarwat, Race Director

James, Bryan, Rob and Rob.

Another small group of volunteers who were truly working a long hard day was our TORC membership chairs and activities chair.  We shall call them:  James, Bryan, Rob and Rob.  While I was off meandering and talking to all the people, these guys were a well oiled machine giving directions, taking memberships, administering raffle tickets, answering questions, selling jerseys and buying me food. My one attempt to jump in to help was a quick lesson in how unprepared I was… if these guys had not have corrected me, I think half the time trial racers would be down at the boat dock parking lot. These guys took all of your support and we ended with 25 new or renewed TORC IMBA members!  That is great, we all appreciate your support.

Raffle winner: Anthony Alston

Support Your LBS

We had some great representation from our friends and sponsors: our local bike shops. These folks are some of the best bike mechanics around. And they are come out on trail workdays. Plus they hang and ride with us.  Our sponsored bike shops started in the fall of last year with 6BC and followed us through the New Light\Beaver Dam Challenge, The Curse at the Crab and culminated at this festival where their sponsorship not only provided for the previous races but also added to the membership drive raffle. TORC is thankful for their support.  So everyone, support your local bike shops and know that they do more than just run a business.

Other bike loving friends of TORC are the non-profit agencies like BikeWalkNC, Triangle Spokes, and Bike Smart-Grow Smart. These non-profits will benefit from the fundraising done through the Tour de Fat event. 

dirt jumps!

Don Foltyn and the dirt jump crew had the dirt jumps open and were showing us where the real skill and fearless bike handling can be found.  Don also led the dirt jumps skills clinic.  These guys also set up the Strider race and brought some big time fun and smiles to our future generations of bike riders.  Thanks to you parents who brought out your families/kids to take part in the festivities.

Big Thanks to all the Triangle Fat Tire Festival Volunteers!

This leaves us with our group rides and group ride leader volunteers. Big thanks to our group ride volunteers.  Parker, and his family, came out to lead our kids/family ride.  Anthony Alston, John Holloway and Chris White led our adult multi-skills rides. Thanks to all our race and festival volunteers. 

TORC is a volunteer organization.  We are only as successful as our volunteers, so we are grateful for those who take time out of their personal lives to help the greater mtb community.  We always need trail work volunteers, ride leader volunteers, event volunteers. There is always something someone can do, so come help if you can.

On behalf of the TORC executive committee and our committee of chairs, thank you for coming out and participating in such a great weekend. See you on the trails.

David Houskeeper, TORC President

Photo credits: Hartman, Anthony, You?

Race Results