Today we’d like to introduce you to TJ Stone.
Hi TJ, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My story starts with being an athlete who needed to stay active. I played college baseball, and afterward started riding bikes as a way to stay active. That grew into racing — crits and road first, then gravel and mountain biking too. I just wanted to be on two wheels.
I’d been helping the previous owner set up UTCX for several years before he eventually approached me about purchasing the series. I saw what it could become — a real season-long cyclocross series that the Utah cycling community could rally around every fall — and decided to take it on. Annaliese and I run the series together now, and it’s been about building it out the right way: securing venues, lining up sponsors, working with racers and volunteers to make it something people look forward to every season. Ten races, September through November, across the state.
Today, it’s this mix of still racing myself and building out UTCX with Annaliese into a series I hope becomes a true staple of the Utah cycling calendar for years to come
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It hasn’t been perfectly smooth, but the struggles have mostly been the kind that come with growing something. Taking over an existing series means you inherit both the goodwill people have built up and the operational headaches nobody sees from the outside.
Finding venues has honestly been the hardest part. Every city and park has its own permitting process, its own requirements, its own timeline. Securing a venue that works for the course, fits the calendar, and gets approved by the city can take a lot of back-and-forth, and it’s a challenge that never fully goes away even as the series matures.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Professionally, I wear two hats that feed into each other more than people might expect. By day, I work in the software/tech space, where I specialize in helping enterprise clients optimize how their teams work — process, systems, that kind of thing. It’s detail-oriented, analytical work, and I’ve always been the kind of person who likes building things that make a process smoother, whether that’s for a client or for myself.
That same instinct is what led me into race organizing. Running UTCX draws on a lot of the same skills — mapping out a season’s worth of logistics, solving problems most people never see, building systems (registration, results, communication) that make the event feel seamless for racers even when there’s a ton of complexity behind the scenes.
What I’m most proud of is probably that combination — staying hands-on with the technical side of UTCX, building our own tools and systems because that’s genuinely where I get energy from. It’s just how I’m wired: I bring a builder’s mindset to race organizing, and I’m always looking for ways to make the experience a little better year over year, using whatever technical skills I’ve got.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I think grassroots cycling is heading toward more professionalization, even at the local level. Racers today expect the same kind of experience they’d get at a bigger event — real-time results, smooth online registration, clear communication — and series that can’t keep up with that are going to struggle to hold onto participants. Technology is going to keep closing that gap between small regional series and the big national ones.
Venue access is probably the biggest wildcard. As cities grow and parks get more in demand, finding and keeping good venues is only going to get harder, so organizers who build strong relationships with cities and land managers are going to have a real advantage.
And honestly, I think participation is going to keep growing. Cycling — gravel, cyclocross, all of it — has had a real surge in popularity, and Utah in particular has the terrain and community to become an even bigger destination for racers, not just locally but regionally.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://utcx.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/utahcyclocross/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UtahCX/
