Nature Calls : A Simple Challenge of Racing Along Winter Trails in Forest Gives These Athletes Happy Feet

If it weren’t for the downpour in Cleveland National Forest, Bill McDermott would have left his 13-year-old son in the dust. As it was, he left him in the mud. Ben Hian, who probably could have won the race, ran a couple of steps behind his soon-to-be-50-year-old mother, Susan. He had no trouble catching up the two times he stopped to relieve himself. The first woman across the finish line was Lake Elsinore’s Cindy Foster. The second was her 47-year-old mother, Arlene.

And race director Baz Hawley, his Australian accent cracking through the morning air and his neatly trimmed white beard scratching up against their faces, kissed them all.

Out the Ortega Highway and up the road that passes a nudist colony and the Los Pinos conservation camp and winds its way to Blue Jay Campground, a strange sort of family affair called the Winter Trail Run Series was under way.

The series of progressively longer races--this one was supposed to be an 8-kilometer event but many participants swore it was closer to 10--weaves through the Cleveland National Forest on a series of sometimes rock-strewn, steep and, on this rainy Sunday, muddy trails.

Hawley, 55, who directs five major ultra (50 or more kilometers) trail races each year in California, has always been interested in running “somewhere besides PCH” as he puts it, because running in the mountains is “magic, mate.”

“I had been putting on a number of ultras and was this now-famous race director and neighborhood guru and all that bull,” he says, “but I kept hearing so many people say, ‘It sounds fun, but I can’t run 50 miles.’

“So I said to myself, ‘Maybe I should reduce the distance, get more participation and maybe a percentage of those people will catch on to the ultra feeling.”

Turns out, Hawley’s a fairly astute business-bloke. Getting more folks on the trails--and past the fear of running long distances in the wilderness--led to growing participation in all his races.

“No one was doing a series like this when I started and we’ve grown about 10% in each of our first five years,” he said. “But this race wouldn’t have been the same if 5,000 people showed up. It’s actually more precious with the smaller numbers.

“Of course, I don’t make any money, but I love it. The camaraderie, all the nice people. . . . If it pays the rent and the phone bill with enough left over for a couple of beers, I think I’m on a winner.”

Brian McDermott felt like a winner too. An eighth-grader at Whittier’s Rancho-Starbuck Intermediate School and midfielder for the La Habra United soccer club, he finished in 1 hour 15 minutes 43 seconds. His dad was across the line more than a half hour earlier.

“I never saw him,” Brian said, “but I had fun. The scenery was really beautiful. The trail was pretty rocky and I had to walk up some of the steep hills because I was getting tired. But I’ve never run that far before in a race, so I felt pretty good. I plan to run the whole series, well, up to the last one [a 50K], anyway.”

Bill McDermott, a 45-year-old aerospace engineer who has won the Catalina Marathon 12 times, never had any intention of running alongside his son. He wanted Brian to experience a trail run the way he believes one should . . . alone.

“I figured the only way to really appreciate this kind of race would be for him to do it on his own,” McDermott said. “He needed to see what it feels like to be all alone out there, because much of the time in these kinds of races, you can’t see anyone else.”

But father and son still had much to share.

“When they came home, Brian was so excited and Bill was obviously exhilarated,” Wanda McDermott said. “The race was all we talked about at dinner. And the time they spent training in the hills near our house was very special too.”

Ben Hian, a preschool teacher in La Jolla, took another approach, and his mom is glad he did. She turned 50 last week and thought the 8K would be a “cool way to celebrate my birthday.”

“Let’s just say he ran at my pace, I didn’t run at his,” said Susan Hian, laughing. “It was my first trail run ever and it was wonderful. Ben invited me to do it and my intention was to walk, but I trained a little, I had been running four or five miles every other day, and I finished in an hour and 17 minutes.

“It’s a wonderful feeling out there. I was on such a high, a combination of the beautiful scenery and being able to share it with Ben. We crossed the finish line holding hands.”

And then came the obligatory smooch from Hawley.

“Right on the lips,” she said. “I’d never met him before, but Ben had warned me. He’s quite a character, but a real sweetheart.”

*

Baz Hawley was born in Coventry, England, and ended up in Australia when he was 22 and took an engineering job with Ford Motor Co. He played semipro soccer and was a professional boxer in Australia before returning to England in 1972 when his father died.

Eight months later, very short on funds, Hawley decided to use his last few pounds to buy a plane ticket to California and “pop in” on an acquaintance who lived in Cypress.

Hawley was planning on staying just long enough to earn air fare back to Australia because, “every big-man Yank I’d ever met was a [jerk] and I really didn’t need to mix with 200 million of the bastards.” Within two weeks, he landed a job designing gas-powered model airplanes.

Time and toys flew and Hawley grew fond of the States. Well, he certainly was fond of his ’69 Mustang, comfortable rented condo in Tustin and the line of credit so easy to obtain in the United States. So, when his visa was about to expire, Hawley hired an attorney to help him stay.

“I went down on Broadway in Santa Ana, got a lawyer and paid him $500,” he said. “Wished I still had the $500. They threw me out of the country on Christmas Day 1973.”

Hawley returned to Australia and worked for GM, but he applied for and got a job with a Santa Ana manufacturing firm that eventually helped him earn permanent residency. Soon, green card in hand, he began his quest to become ultra racing’s most vocal, enthusiastic and sometimes overbearing--if you don’t like to be kissed, anyway--impresario.

“Baz is really the No. 1 trail race director and without him we wouldn’t have much,” McDermott said. “He does it all on a shoestring, it’s not like he’s making a fistful of money. Sure, he’s a little crazy, but everybody loves him.

“And he’s got this thing with the ladies. I have a friend who brought his two daughters with him to the last race and when Baz called the youngest, who’s about 12, up to get her T-shirt, he tried to give her a kiss and a hug. She managed to squirm away. I think she’s the first girl that ever got away. He’s kissed them all.”

Scott McKenzie, a professor in the manufacturing department at Fullerton College, ran his first ultra in 1993 after reading a blurb about Hawley in The Times.

“Baz was such a, well, welcoming individual and he got me hooked,” McKenzie said. “I had run marathons, even a few trail marathons, but I never knew this culture of ultra trail runners existed. Now I run every one of Baz’s races.”

Hawley also knew nothing of the cult of ultra in 1979, when a friend he had been running with asked him to “assist” him during the Western States 100-mile race from Squaw Valley to Auburn.

“He told me about this 100-mile race in the mountains,” Hawley said, “My first question was, ‘Why do you need my assistance?’ followed very closely by ‘Why do you want to run 100 miles?’ But I went up with him and was immediately fascinated.

“They have aid stations along the way that you can get to by vehicle. You’d see a person at an aid station, then you’d drive 50 miles and see them again a few hours later. How did they get there through this wilderness? Who marked the trail? And the atmosphere, the support these people showed each other, was so exciting. Then I went through the experience of my friend sort of dying and coming back to life. It just captured my imagination.”

Hawley had run only two or three marathons at the time, but he was a self-proclaimed tough guy who brought an unparalleled level of confidence into every sporting endeavor he attempted. He ran 70 or 80 miles a week and punched the heck out of the heavy bag most nights for a year, returning to the High Sierra with every intention of swaggering across the finish line with the panache of MacArthur walking ashore at Morotai.

His goal was to finish in less than 24 hours and take home one of the coveted silver belt buckles awarded to those who make it just one very long day on the trial.

“The first 30 miles were fun,” he said. “Then somewhere about 50 miles a piano fell out of a tree and landed on my back. Dehydration had ahold of me and they stuck an IV in me.”

Hawley recovered enough to continue and was at the 64-mile mark--dreaming about what an incredibly seductive piece of furniture a chair is--when a fellow competitor who was running alongside said, “All we’ve got to do is maintain this pace for another 13 hours.”

“I said, ‘Mate, there’s no way I can maintain this pace, or any pace, for another 13 hours.”

Four years later, Hawley completed the Western States--the race McKenzie calls “the Boston Marathon of 100-milers”--and brought home a new belt buckle.

“That,” he says, “was the coup d grace of my sporting history.”

*

Nancy Nunn met Hawley at the bottom of the final switchback of the San Juan Trail 50-mile race in 1987. The second-to-last competitor had come in an hour earlier and Hawley was sitting in the dark, flashing his truck’s headlights on and off as a signal.

“Then I saw this flashlight up the trail and heard someone say, ‘Baz, sing us a song.’ ”

Seizing the moment to show off his sense of humor, Hawley belted out a few verses of “Hard Day’s Night.”

“You know what he said to me?” Nunn said. “He said, ‘If you think you feel bad now, wait until you do 100 miles.’ ”

In 1994, Nunn, who ended up living with Hawley for more than two years, completed the Vermont 100-mile Endurance Run.

“It’s a very exciting thing the first time you cross the finish line in one of these races,” said Nunn, who now lives in Studio City. “It’s a great accomplishment. It’s sort of like the first time you finish a marathon, but when you’re running on the road, you’re always looking at your watch. This is a completely different experience.”

An experience that has become more accessible to those disinclined to put themselves through multiple hours of intense pain, thanks to Hawley’s series of shorter off-road runs.

“I’ve always preferred running on trails,” Bill McDermott said, “but the vast majority of trail races are ultras. Trail running itself has nothing to do with distance. They run cross-country in high school and college, but there aren’t many places to compete off-road after that if you don’t want to run 50 miles.

“Running in the hills is very different. Your attention is diverted by the scenery and the hours just slip away. Plus, it’s a different approach to running. There’s a go-as-you-please approach that’s more appealing and less intimidating. I really notice it with Brian. He would never take a six-mile run on the street. But in the hills, if you come along a spot with a great view or happen on a waterfall, you stop and you look.”

Sounds like magic, mate.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Winter Trail Run Series

Where: Blue Jay Campground, Cleveland National Forest.

Directions: 22 miles east on Ortega Highway off Interstate 5; look for signs to campground.

Dates and distances: Jan. 19, 12K; Feb. 2, 15K; Feb. 16, 18K; March 2, four-by-8K relay; March 16, San Juan Trail 50K (31.2 miles).

Times: Races begin at 8 a.m. except for San Juan Trail at 7 a.m.

Cost: $15, except for relay ($60 per team) and San Juan Trail ($40).

To register or to help on race day: Contact Race Director Baz Hawley, (714) 367-1070.