You can’t say Michelle Juehring hasn’t faced her share of challenges in the seven years she has served as the race director of the Quad-City Times Bix 7.
In her first full year on the job, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put a stranglehold on the entire country, forcing events such as the Bix 7 to make radical adjustments. The race was held on a virtual basis that summer.
In 2022, floods ravaged the Quad-Cities, as they have so often, and Juehring and her staff were forced to assemble six different contingency plans on how to reroute the race, if needed.
Then there was last year. Torrential thunderstorms hammered the area the night before the big race and lingered into the morning hours. Juehring consulted with city officials and meteorologists, monitoring the weather long before the sun even rose. She ultimately made the difficult choice to delay the start of the race for an hour. It all turned out great in the end.
Now Juehring is reaping the rewards of dealing so effectively with all those obstacles. Last winter she was named the National Race Director of the Year by Marathon Foto/Road Race Management, joining her predecessor and mentor, Ed Froehlich, who won the same award in 1993.
More recently, she was presented the Break the Tape Award by Chicago Event Management and members of her staff members also have taken a few bows. In June, Bix 7 operations director Laura Torgerud was named an “emerging industry leader’’ by the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety.
Juehring said she still is humbled by all the accolades and said the people around her, including Torgerud, deserve as much of the credit as she does.
“My name may be on the plaque but it’s those that I work with, it’s the people that do the race, the people that volunteer, that help us be the race that we are,’’ she said. “I just happen to have the privilege to be the person up front and help orchestrate it and see it all come together.
“I like to think I’m a player-coach, not in an intrusive way but rather an encouraging way. I just love the industry that we’re in.’’
The Bix 7 heads into its 52nd running a week from Saturday strong and healthy and ready to face new challenges.
The race has survived COVID-19. The number of entries the past two years has been larger than in the two years prior to the pandemic and the Bix 7 has renewed its corporate sponsorship agreement with the Quad-City Times for another 10 years.
Nevertheless, Juehring is somewhat taken aback by all these honors, especially the national race director award. She was visiting her parents in Onalaska, Wis., when she got word that she had won and she was told she couldn’t tell anyone about it prior to the ceremony. However, she insisted that she be able to tell her husband Dave, Torgerud and Froehlich. She also told her parents.
She is only the eighth woman to win in the 38-year history of the award.
“I rarely bring that up in anything that I do because I’m a race director, I’m not a female race director,’’ she said. “But I thought that was kind of cool and I hope that would be inspirational for other people in the field and the industry.’’
She said she has come to realize how important it is to be prepared and flexible in her thinking, and ready to tackle any sort of challenge.
“There’s been a lot of unknowns,’’ she said. “It’s one thing to plan a world-class race … but things change and they keep changing. You prepare the best you can knowing what you know but when things keep changing, it’s so different.
“And again, I’m so fortunate to have the history and the dedication of the people we work with: The committee chairs and volunteers but also the runners and walkers. People continue to come back and say ‘This is important to us. We want to have fun. We want to challenge ourselves. We want a world-class race. We want the athletes to keep coming back.’ That shows us that everything we do each year is worth it.’’
Juehring, like Froehlich, has tried to add new wrinkles to the Bix 7 each year in order to appeal to new people and to satisfy the thousands who have turned out for the race for decades.
“Michelle is really working hard to tweak the race, the way Ed Froehlich used to with Bix,’’ said legendary marathoner Bill Rodgers, who has been a Bix 7 regular since 1980. “That’s a great way of thinking. Keep promoting your event to appeal to different groups of people.’’
Juehring said her greatest reward may have come when the 2025 race finally got started after the storms relented.
As she stood on the starting line platform, she worried that delaying the race may have discouraged large numbers of runners from sticking around. She thought many may have left or just gone straight to the postrace party.
“The gun went off and people kept coming and coming …’’ Juehring said, recalling that she had tears in her eyes. “People ran it. It was amazing … I get emotional when I think of that day because it was very intense. It was a lot and our community showed up, the running community. And it was a blast.’’
