Tour de Rock volunteer gears up to chair '15 ride

After years of volunteering, Trey Williams of Little Rock is now in the saddle as chairman of the 2015 Tour de Rock, the annual cycling event that benefi ts CARTI.
After years of volunteering, Trey Williams of Little Rock is now in the saddle as chairman of the 2015 Tour de Rock, the annual cycling event that benefi ts CARTI.

For the past 11 years, on a Saturday morning in June, bicyclists have filled North Little Rock's Burns Park for the start of the CARTI Tour de Rock. And for the past 11 years Trey Williams has been there, too, if not always on his bike.

Williams was usually with other CARTI volunteers, making sure the eight rest stops on the routes of the tour were staffed and well-supplied with food and drinks for hard-pedaling riders. He was also out driving the course late into the day, pacing the last riders to the finish.

That last bit might sound like a given on a charity ride, but apparently it's not. A rider from the 2012 tour, a fellow who was hitting century tours all over the country, told Williams that kind of attention wasn't common in his experience.

"He was a slow rider and he said what impressed him about the Tour de Rock was that we followed him in and made sure he got back safely," Williams says on a soggy evening at a Little Rock restaurant. "One of the things we take pride in at the Tour de Rock is that we've never left anybody out on the road. We have followed the last rider, even if it took them nine hours, to the end."

For 2015, Williams makes the jump from longtime volunteer -- he's been there since the first tour in 2003 -- to Tour de Rock chairman, and even though next year's event is 10 months down the road (June 6), meetings have been set and the planning is beginning to roll.

"We don't want to be the biggest, necessarily," Williams says of the ride, "but we want to be the best."

With participation fluctuating generally between 1,000 and 1,200, the ride isn't quite as plump as the 2,000-capacity Big Dam Bridge 100, but through entry fees, rider fundraising and sponsorship dollars, the event has raised more than $1 million for what was once called Central Arkansas Radiation Therapy Institute, a cancer treatment center. Over the years, the tour has contributed about 80 percent of money raised to CARTI; it gobbles up only 20 percent in operating costs -- thanks to sponsors and volunteers.

By day, Williams, 46, is a project manager for East Harding Construction, but he can often be found on his bike with a group of pals, several of whom also make up a big part of the Tour de Rock volunteer corps.

Tour founder and longtime Williams cycling buddy Stephen Bentley is also on those rides.

"Trey is a person who always comes forward," Bentley says of Williams, only the tour's fourth chairman. "He steps up and has been real passionate about the Tour de Rock. I was glad he accepted" the chairman's position.

Williams grew up in North Little Rock, graduated Little Rock's Catholic High School in 1986 and earned a bachelor of science degree in industrial management from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway in 1991. In '92, he bought his first mountain bike, a Specialized Rockhopper.

"I remember paying $900 for a bicycle and I thought, 'This is insane,'" he chuckles.

Central Arkansas mountain bikers don't have to travel far to find good trails nowadays, but in the early '90s, pedaling off-road was a different beast. "It was tough. ... All we did was ride dirt roads and four-wheeler trails. We rode at Camp Robinson before there were any trails."

A few years in the mid-to-late '90s spent living in Colorado Springs, Colo., riding buffed and primed trails, made the dearth of good riding back home much more obvious.

Things began to change as more riders started hitting the woods and single-track trails were being developed in central Arkansas. And though he still rides mountain bikes, he and most of his pals also take to the streets on their skinny-tired road bikes.

"We've been riding together on Wednesday nights with the same group for about 25 years," Bentley says. Depending on the time of year, the friends will tackle road rides along the Arkansas River Trail and its environs or take mountain bike rides at Camp Robinson. That support system -- and sharing it -- eventually extended into Williams' volunteer work with Tour de Rock. He rode that first year, when the maximum distance was just 50 miles and has spent the following years volunteering on committees, with a focus on logistics.

"It's a lot of heavy lifting, and I was ready for a new challenge," Williams says.

As chairman, he will be responsible for the tour's budget, organizing steering committee and planning meetings and even designing the official tour jersey, which, in a twist, will be for sale to riders. (Previously, tour participants had to raise a certain amount of money to earn a jersey.)

The tour has always catered to casual, recreational and serious cyclists alike, with routes of 32, 50, 62 and 100 miles. The longer rides stretch into the flat and fertile farmlands east of North Little Rock where a cyclist's biggest obstacles are headwinds and the June heat. Expect the family fun ride to make a return for 2015, Williams says, and to see a few tweaks to the other courses. Oh, and as always, there will be a barbecue feast at the end in Burns Park.

Williams, Bentley and their bike pals have also traveled across the country -- Chicago, Colorado, New York -- riding in other tours, researching what will and what won't work in Arkansas.

"We've learned a lot about how to set up rest stops and support, on-site registration, and getting registration to flow right. And also not making registration difficult on the riders," Williams says.

Riding in those other cities has also made Williams realize how unique the two-wheeled pedaling scene is here.

"All I can say is the New Yorks, the D.C.s, they all have great systems, but it's hard to beat [riding] here at home. It's hard to beat what we have with the Arkansas River Trail System," he says.

High Profile on 08/17/2014

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