My spring officiating season has finally come to an end

The Wasatch mountains in Utah

It's been a fun four months of officiating, starting with the high school races that began back in February, and ending last weekend with the 2019 USA Cycling Mountain Bike Marathon National Championships in Palo Duro Canyon, close to Amarillo. 

Squeezed in between the finals of our high school series at the end of April and Nats was a one-week trip out to Utah. Just like in the past two years I had been assigned to the Soldier Hollow Bike Festival, which has grown from its original humble roots as a one-day race to a four-day UCI S1 stage race. Soldier Hollow was the site of the Nordic events of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and just a month or two back a biathlon World Cup had taken place at this fabulous venue. That meant that a lot of the infrastructure for parking and spectating was still in place, although almost all of the snow was gone. (There were a few dirty patches next to the trail, but that was all.)

Soldier Hollow, site of the nordic events at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics

Just like in 2017 and 2018 I was the Vice Chief who helped the UCI-appointed PCP (in this case, Jim Crompton from the US) and was responsible for the amateur portion of this complex event. The race organizer, MJ Turner, and his helpers put on an impressive race, and I had more fun than headaches, even if there were some timing issues that required a bit of extra work. But just being out at Soldier Hollow, walking some of the trails, looking at the gorgeous Heber valley and the Wasatch mountains, and seeing old friends more than make up for some of the hiccups.

Speaking of old friends: After the conclusion of the event on Sunday, Park City denizen Rick Morris picked me up for dinner with him and his wife, Mel, at their cozy place. I couldn't believe the amount of snow that was still piled up behind their house--the last snowstorm had moved through just about 10 days earlier. As always, it was great to catch up with Rick, whom I've known since his time as a mountain bike racer when he still lived in Texas.

My buddy Rick

My return to Lubbock took a little longer than planned thanks to various airplane maintenance and then weather issues. Instead of flying home through Phoenix I was rerouted through Dallas, where I had to spend Monday night in a hotel (paid for by AA since the maintenance issue preceded the weather) so that I didn't make it back to Lubbock until well after noon on Tuesday as more maintenance problems delayed our DFW departure. Oh well, might as well get it all out of the way in one fell swoop.

The three days in Lubbock blew by like a spring storm--dental appointment, laundry, a couple of bike rides, catching up with mail and bills, and hosting Alan on Thursday night on his way to the Panhandle to see his family for Mother's Day. And Friday morning I was in the Beemer to drive up to Palo Duro.

When I had received the appointment as Chief Referee to this national championship I had expected a hot, sunny weekend in a dry environment where racers would suffer from heat exhaustion--and probably everybody else had thought along those lines, too. Nobody would have imagined that riders would have to don jackets and that the start would have to be delayed by two hours because of rain! The canyon was greener than I have ever seen it, and when the sun finally poked through on Saturday afternoon the entire place exploded into rich colors that wowed even the locals.

One of the last finishers (surviving the time cut)

The race attracted about 350 racers from more than 25 states, in all age categories. The local organizers, Karie Mueller and Keevin Sharpe, had prepared a double loop course through the US's second largest canyon system that was truly championship worthy. Not one racer complained that it was too easy! While the Pros finished the course in a little more than three hours, many amateurs took five hours or more, and some could not make the time cut. Tough indeed.

On Friday night, our crew of four USAC officials was treated to something rather special: We were picked up at our hotel in Amarillo by a limousine and whisked away to the Big Texan Steak Ranch, home of the world famous 72 oz steak dinner. What, you've never heard of it? You must be kidding! All along I-40 there are billboards inviting you to a FREE 72 ounce steak dinner (that's a little more than two kilograms!), as long as you eat that huge chunk of meat plus the salad plus the loaded potato plus the cobbler in an hour or less--and keep it all down for another 10 minutes or so before you're finally free to puke it all up, when you're off stage (where you're placed so everyone can watch you eat yourself sick). Yep, that's Texas for you. Apparently about half of the people who give it a try manage to complete the task (and feel like crap, I am sure); the other half fail miserably, feel like crap, and have to pay for the dinner! The fastest that someone has eaten the entire shebang is a little under 5 MINUTES!!! And some female professional eater managed to eat TWO dinners in less than an hour (and earned a fat paycheck by doing so). Well, we decided to go for humbler portions, enjoyed the somewhat hokey western decor, had a few good drinks, and then were limoed back to the hotel. Thanks to the owner of the restaurant for treating the officials!

And thus ended my spring campaign working races. My next appointment is going to be the mid-July Elite Mountain Bike National Championships in Winter Park, Colorado, where I'll be once again chief referee. I also have some anti-doping assignments in the late summer, but until then, I'll continue to travel and play privately, because sitting at home becomes boring after a while. Stay tuned!

Jürgen