By Gordon Wright

At today’s registration, I saw through the welter of gauzy running garb a glimpse of the iconic: the utterly distinctive red flash of the very first backpack ever made for adventure racing.

It was 1997, and Salomon had fallen for the young sport in a big way.  With the help of Navy SEAL Duncan Smith, the company knocked the ball out of the park on their first try.  At 30 liters, it was a big, expedition-style bag, but it bore tellingly authentic race details: a tiny neoprene front zip compartment, an ample mesh helmet holster, a wide silver reflective stripe and drain holes at the bottom of the bag.

It was what every young adventure racer aspired to own, and after I got mine in 1998, I beat it to death until, mercifully, I retired it from competition in 2006.  As far as I know, there are only a few still left in existence; for all its utility and comfort, the pack has long been eclipsed by smaller and lighter-weight models.

Whoever was sporting it was old-school, and indeed, it indeed turned out to belong to one of the original gangsters of adventure racing, Ed Bugerin.

 Bugerin, who as an instructor helped Smith launch the seminal Presidio Adventure Racing Academy, is on hand because his wife and running teammate, Carol Jaxon, read about the inaugural event in Runner’s World.

“I thought it sounded cool in February,” laughed Carol, an overtly fit blonde who is the race director for Hawaii’s giant road race, the Great Aloha Run.  “But now that I’m here, I’m worried about the cold and the altitude.”

Those are salient concerns, especially since the couple lives in Honolulu, but their year-round fitness is as solid as Ed’s thighs.  They met at a Hawaii biathlon in 1993 and haven’t stopped working out since.  Carol, in fact, had to beg out of a race for her canoe club, Lokahi, to make it here.

Catching up with Ed was a delight, though his profession and background make it a bit difficult to interview him.  Officially, Ed was a member of 1^st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta.

Unofficially, that meant that Ed was a member of a military unit that is as storied and lethal as it is secretive.

Ed officially retired as an E-9 (Sergeant Major to you) in 1992, but his skills are still highly sought-after.  He visited Iraq as a security consultant in-country from 2003 to 2004, and deployed there twice more in the same role.

“My contract was to provide a PSD – Personal Security Detachment – to people that needed protection,” shrugged Ed.

You’re not going to get a hell of a lot more than that out of Ed.  Nor do you want to try.  But he has plenty of other noteworthy bits on his resume, as a frequent runner of the HURT 100 in his home state, and as the founder of the ridiculously difficult STREND Fitness.

The GORE-TEX TransRockies Run is glad to have Ed and Carol here as participants – they’re just the sort of mellow, athletic and engaging people the event attracts.   But we’re also pleased to know that we have one unique counter-terrorism asset in our midst, should that unlikely need ever arise.