Race Organizer Plans to Hit Trail, but Only as Far as Yosemite

Baz Hawley would like to dispel the rumors. He is not planning to move back to Australia.

However, the 57-year-old race organizer is leaving Orange County in May. He’s moving--temporarily, he hopes--back to a bed and breakfast he owns just outside Yosemite National Park in order to refurbish it. But he hopes to maintain the eight or nine races he organizes each year locally.

His trail races draw only between 40-80 people per race, by his own estimates, but the following is loyal. Hawley’s impending departure concerned many area runners. Vern Pitsker, president of Snail’s Pace Running Club, expressed concern that Hawley’s absence would leave a gaping hole in competitive trail running.

Hawley was so intent on returning, he spoke to fellow runners about taking over organization of his trail races on an interim basis.

“I talked to a couple of local runners, people who have been longtime friends of mine,” he said. “What I’m finding is that, yes, they still want to continue the races and they would work it out as to whereby a running club maintains the races . . . because for an individual to take this on, unless they know what they’re doing, it’s very difficult.”

Hawley was an engineer until about nine years ago, when he decided he had enough of the office life. The head of Feet First Promotions, he hesitatingly calls himself a professional race organizer, admitting “you can’t get rich in the race organizing business.”

Between organizing volunteers and clearing routes and other duties, race organizers hardly ever compete in their races. But for Hawley, there’s a more serious reason. Slowed by Achilles’ tendon surgery on both legs, he’s scaled back his training to about 30-40 miles per week.

“What I was going to do last year was go back to Australia to live. The reason for that was that someone expressed an interest in buying my bed and breakfast,” he said.

“It all looked very good,” said Hawley, who spent 12 years in Australia before moving to the United States in 1973. “One, they liked the place. Two, they worked for a company in the park.”

But the couple underestimated how much money they needed to purchase the real estate, and around Christmas, decided to back out.

In the meantime, “I made two trips back to Australia with the intention of moving back,” Hawley said. “I planned to utilize the money I was going to get from the sale of my property to set up a home in Australia.”

Hawley now hopes to maintain his Winter Trail Running Series in the Cleveland National Forest by wintering in Orange County. The six-race series includes an 8K, 12K, 15K, 50K, 4 X 8K relay and 18K from January through March. He also organized the second Catalina 100K in February.

He commuted between Yosemite and Orange County for several years, after buying the bed and breakfast in 1989, to conduct the races.

More problematic will be maintaining the 15-year-old San Juan Trail 50-mile race, held in October, and the Saddleback Mountain Marathon, which he has organized for about eight years and also run in the fall. He has not set the dates for the fall events because his plans are still tentative.

Scott McKenzie, a local trail runner, said he and Hawley have discussed maintaining the 50-mile race, perhaps moving the date to November. McKenzie said he and fellow runners John Loeschhorn, Kent Holder, Doug Spencer, Bill McDermott and Rob McNair, who have participated as volunteers in some of Hawley’s races, would help with organizational duties.