Left Coast Low Down
Adventure Racing in the land of fruits and nuts

This was a year of firsts for the BAAR Brawl, the infamous 24-hour "training event" that originated in 2004 as an excuse to gather the disparate members of the Bay Area Adventure Racers for an early season workout and that has now mutated into something wholly wonderful.

It was the first year I didnâ??t design the course. It was the first time Iâ??ve pounded beers during a race. It was the first Brawl that had a finishing rate of over four percent and it was the first 24-hour race for two of my teammates. Significantly, it was the first time the event resembled anything like a real adventure race instead of a Keystone Cops episode.

All credit goes to the course designer and overall organizational genius who shall go by the name of Zen Blanc. Under his leadership, a brutal but attainable course was set; Sea Trek not only offered great boats at a great rate, but delivered them to "Buckâ??s Landing," the most sublime S/F/TA center known to man.

Huge credit also goes to a veritable fleet of volunteers: Jon, Karen, Jane, Bob â?? Iâ??m missing a few here, but you made a brutal race run like clockwork. Where else can you pull up at a boat landing and find David Kelly reaching down to haul your kayak out of the water and handing you a hot mug of coffee?

The turn-out was almost disturbingly large and a testament to the efforts of current racers reaching out to their peers and dragging them into the sport of masochists. Roughly 65 athletes â?? the second-largest in Brawl history â?? toed the line at Buckâ??s to listen to Zenâ??s pre-race speech. At 7:30, the first of the boats went in the water for a quick jaunt northwest to McInnis Park, where a CP lay at the top of the miniature golf course.

The golf option, which promised time bonuses to those taking up the putter, was an area of hot contention between me and Zen. I am ridiculously old school, and ridiculed the putt-putt inclusion. Zen thought the racers would find it to be fun. The bottom line -- I owe Zen some money.

My boat-mate was Doug Giles, my best friend from high school. Built like the rugby player he once was, Doug is as strong as an ox, but given that his paddling training consisted of hours sawing away at the Brooklyn YMCA rowing machine, we had low expectations for this segment. Doug managed to not whine at all during the paddle, a significant achievement given what we were about to go through.

In our other boat was my regular teammate Austin Murphy and another newcomer to AR, Ian Fein - a journalist friend to both Austin and me. 26 years old, stronger than a fart in a coffin and possessing natural navigation skills, Ian is going to be an amazing racer. So there we were: two washed up racers who are old enough to have gone through the Presidio Adventure Racing Academy and two newcomers who had a total of 24 hours of racing combined.

But our team cohesion was strong, our expectations reasonable, and our beer cold. After leaving the slough system of San Pablo Bay, we streaked south past Buckâ??s, nailed the CPs at China Camp and McNears and (Zen, feel free to deduct half of our kayak time bonus) split up to get CPK5 and CPK5B. Austin and Ian sailed on to Richmond while Doug and I rode the tide down to the Marin Islands. We turned around after chatting a bit with Gavin Keith and his teammate and hugged the shore back to McNearâ??s, where we could watch our two stronger paddlers batter themselves silly ferrying towards us.

They were barely worked, but our real effort lay ahead: a tide of at least 2mph was working against us, and the miles crept past at an achingly slow rate. By the time we pulled out of the water, we were noodled, but bolstered by Rick Baraff, who pulled me aside and said, "Dude, that was the worst thing that Iâ??ve ever done in the BAAR Brawl."

If you know the epic, ugly, brutal nature of the Brawl, and Rickâ??s misfortunes in it, youâ??ll see why I was proud. For the record, Rick had the fastest time of the day despite how horrible he felt on the water.

Five hours of paddling and a leisurely transition put us on the bikes at 1:42 on a gorgeous spring-like afternoon. We headed immediately over to my neck of the woods, Fairfax, and climbed Oak Manor Road to get the bonus labyrinth. Just a few hundred yards from that CP, we realized why few teams took our route: egress is not possible from that angle. After a surreptitious fence scramble, we nabbed the CP and I called my wife to give her our location while Doug snapped a few pictures. After a couple more CPs, we crossed under Brownâ??s Bridge above my house, and there were my wife and kids â?? making for a joyous interlude before we started the serious biking.

We traced a counter-clockwise route, taking Broken Dam and Goldman to the western edge of Tamarancho. Weâ??d already lost Austin to some fund-raiser that absolutely needed the presence of a Sports Illustrated staffer, so it was just the three of us grooving on perhaps the coolest CP in Brawl history save for the Sitting Bull monument on Tam: Pamâ??s Blue Ridge. We ran down some awful trail from there, bolted into Fairfax and fetched up at a 7-11, where I ate two chicken taquitos, to the horror of my teammates.

We, like many others, had some trouble finding the remote bridge CP, but Ian worked together with Aaron Sorenson and his newbie teammate Michael Popov - a Russian whoâ??s as strong as Ivan Drago and twice as nice. He also holds the rather astonishing distinction of holding the John Muir Trail unsupported speed record of FOUR DAYS, FIVE HOURS. We didnâ??t deserve to be in the same zip code as these guys, but with dusk falling, we all advanced into San Rafael and strategized our attack on the China Camp loop.

We (well, Ian, who had the whole of China Camp absolutely wired), decided to hit CPB2 first. Ascending some ridiculous fire road, we ran into a scrum of other racers and as night fell we entered into that blurry reality that only twelve hours of racing provides. I remember some savvy navigation, passing Brian Schmitz and Mark Manning roughly twelve times each, and finally spinning along the Shoreline Trail past my bedtime, reveling in the mild breeze and hooting owls. We pushed the bikes. A lot.

Doug had battled not one, not two, but three grand mal cramps of his quads, the last achingly close to the flood lights of Buckâ??s. We limped in, slammed our passports and ten bucks on the bar, and were repaid with three of the tastiest beers weâ??ve ever had.

Thanks, Zen. But the real challenge awaited: getting around a trekking course, at night, that Zen opined would take "Seven hours â?? eight if you fart around."

We took San Pedro Road at 11:30 pm to yet another 7-11 that was not only marked on the map, but alluded to by Zen while we pumped him for information between gulps of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Someone â?? his name rhymes with Piles â?? had the brilliant idea to pick up a sixer of Budweiser. Thatâ??s 24 additional ounces of pack weight each, but they would come in handy later.

Sure enough, near the 7-11 we found a sweet trail bearing roughly in the direction (126 degrees) that we wanted to go to hit CPT2. We found it ridiculously easily, which was nice, because we were about to suffer.

I figured that the best way to CPT3 was to go straight up what Ian and Doug called, "Gordonâ??s Hell," a four-points-of-contact scramble of 550 vertical feet. I thought it was fun, and got cursed for my merriment. But sure enough, after attaining the ridge, we were just 30 yards from the CP.We took the wrong trail to CPT4, and paid a half-hour and 350 feet of useless vert for our troubles, but that was our only nav bobble of the race. The rest of the CPs clicked by, nearly all of them involving scrambling down some rotten trail and back up, quads aquiver. The fog had rolled in by then, making travel difficult, especially since we were also swaddled with penumbras of mist boiling off our own bodies.

After a final discursion to nab CPT1, we cracked open Budweiser v.2, and staggered down some unmarked trail in the general direction of Buckâ??s. We drained the last of the Bud on San Pedro Road, rolled into Buckâ??s at 6:13 am, kicked Zen awake and demanded yet more beer.

We had finished the BAAR Brawl in spectacular fashion, half-soused, fully stoked and newly-blooded. This raggedy-ass and beer-laden team took only seven hours and change to crush the trek loop, including our half-hour detour. Needless to say, I love my teammates, and I love the Brawl. There really isnâ??t anything like it, and thanks to all who made it happen.