By – Michael McColgan
Sunday January 12th was the second running of the I AM FAT, TWO Fatbike Enduro. From the amount of fun had the first two years I thinks it’s safe to say it’s gonna keep on keeping on and if you missed it, start thinking about next year. This is a seriously fun event put on by World of Bikes, Geoff’s Bike and Ski and led by the venerable Fattie Lumpkin.
And if you didn’t have a fatbike, that wasn’t a problem. As soon as you walked into the lodge there was the sign up for solo or the team, with plenty of riders willing to use their fatbike for the whole team so people got to experience the joy of playing with fatbikes in the snow. With all the smiles and comments from first time fatbike riders, I would not be surprised to see a bump in sales in the Iowa City area.
The course design was a well thought out figure eight playground, literally. At one point you ride through a playground to check back in at the lodge of the host venue, Trueblood Recreation area, before venturing back out for some drops, off camber turns and fun beach riding. Coming up just shy of two miles, it gave everyone on the relay teams plenty of time to get out and play as we as hanging back to socialize/heckle at the lodge.
Luckily, Iowa City saw enough snow leading up to the event that the unusually warm race day weather just made an already great event even better. The warm day made sure that conditions changed as the race went on, packed snow become a little slushy, soft snow got packed and just enough made on the “run-up” to make it tough.
When you decided to hang back and refuel at the lodge you could grab some grub courtesy of the Johnson County Youth Offroad Riders which raised $778 for the cause of helping get kids on bikes. At the end of the day, some people went away with some pretty cool trophies, five people were randomly selected to win some winter helmets and everybody left looking forward to next year.