This year’s Girlz Gone Riding Rocktober festival & CORBA Membership Drive was by far the largest to date! With 37 exhibitors and over 300 in attendance, our expectations were far exceeded!
The event started out on Saturday with our pre-ride for our ride volunteers. We had 34 ride volunteers pre-riding all routes for the guided rides. We ran into the mounted patrol all day too! Great way to start the weekend of epicness!
Saturday evening was our traditional goodie bag stuffing party and raffle tagging. This year Cycle World Chatsworth hosted and in a few hours many volunteers got 250 goodie bags stuffed and over $20K of raffle items tagged! And of course we had pizza, cake and vino!
The morning of the Rocktober festival, the ranger at MCSP was kind enough to have the gate open at 6am this year!! This allowed our demo trucks to get there in plenty of time to set up and get the bikes ready to go for our lady shredders.
It was still dark in the morning AND it was raining a wee bit…so I was just a bit concerned that the rain would stick. The trails were mostly clay, so they don’t hold any rain well at all. Lucky for us, it cleared up for a beautiful day!
Since I had announced the gates were going to be open early, everyone seemed to take advantage of it and get there super early. Registration didn’t open until 8am, but at 6:30amish, we already had a ton of riders and the parking lot was half full. Lots of anxious ladies eager to start the festival!
Once everyone was signed in, got their goodie bags and demo bikes, it was time for the morning commencement. This is always the toughest part to prepare for since once a year I get this enormous audience and there are so many people to thank as well as announcements to make. Next year I promise it will be much shorter!
I introduced each chapter and the chapter leaders. I talked about the two C’S which I live by. Community and Club. All supporters and exhibitors at the event received a verbal mention and we went on to intro our 4 amazing volunteer coaches this year. Returning head coach Leigh Donovan, returning GGR coach Christine Hirst, new GGR coaches Kris Gross and Erica Phillips.
This year’s community award went to G2 Bikes and Girls Ride 2! This award is given to the shop that shows the most community involvement in women’s cycling, has a great women’s section and has shop rides. G2 and Girls Ride 2 earned this award hands down. I affectionately call them our “sister club” because we are all on the same page when it comes to community. There ride leaders spend the entire weekend with us volunteering too!
Last but not least, Steve Messer, our CORBA President, spoke about trail etiquette. Every Rocktober event is also a CORBA membership drive. Each GGR chapter partners up with their local IMBA chapter.
After the huge group photo, riders split up into their guided ride groups and skills clinics. We had guided rides for all levels and beginner skills clinics running all morning. Rides were all through the park including the famous MASH site, Grasslands and Little Bulldog. Many of these rides went through the super fun creek bed where we had photographers stationed to capture the excitement!
This year we invited a few of our GGR Littles too! We love that they got to see us grown up ladies doing some major shredding!
When riders came back after their guided rides, they enjoyed an afternoon of tons of exhibitors, more demo bikes, lunch, catching up and just enjoying the day. We ended the day with over $20K of raffle prizes including grand prizes from REI, Specialized, Sacred Rides and San Juan Huts. We thank all the bike companies that came out to Rocktober. We had over 100 demo bikes for ladies to demo! Huge shouts out and thank you’s to: Liv, Bulls Bikes USA, Specialized, Trek, Turner and Rocky Mountain. We also want to thank Clif who for the 2nd year sponsored the Clif Fuel station and provided the Rocktober event with all of our hydration and nutrition as well as plenty of goodies for the goodie bags!
The Rocktober festival is so much bigger than GGR. It’s truly a celebration of women’s mountain biking and bringing our community together.
For all pictures, please go to:
http://corbamtb.com/Photos/Misc2015-10-18GGR/_Page.shtml
or
https://girlzgoneriding.shutterfly.com
GGR Girl WE
