What is the Baker to Vegas Challenge Cup Race?

Okay, here is the scoop, to the best that I could find out, on the B2V race. This started out as a grudge match between the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. They decided to each form a relay team and go out in the desert and have a race. The winning team would get beer mugs. Over the years the race course has changed and the teams come from all walks of law enforcement. Although most of the teams come from Southern California there were many teams from Arizona, Nevada, Utah and other areas of the country. In addition, several teams come from foreign countries. This year we saw two teams from Germany (Hamburg and Berlin), one team from Australia and four teams from Canada, including one made up of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

This year's race was the 25th anniversary of the run. The current race course starts a few miles north of Baker, California, on State Highway 127, and goes to Shosone. At Shosone the course veers northeast on Highway 178 into Nevada to Pahrump. From Pahrump it takes Highway 160 into Las Vegas and the race ends at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. The total length of the race is 120 miles. There are 20 legs of the race so each team is made up of 20 runners. At the end of each leg, or stage, is a baton transfer station and rest area. We were assigned to Stage Two of the race.

The race is broken down into several flights. Each team must send in, prior to the race, their team averages for running distances. The slowest teams are put in the first flight and on down until the fastest teams are in the last flight. The first flight starts out from Baker at 9:00 am on Saturday morning and should finish at the Las Vegas Hilton around 4:00 am on Sunday. The last flight leaves Baker at 5:00 pm on Saturday and should reach the Hilton by 9:45 am on Sunday. The longest stage was the one we were working which is 8.2 miles. The other stages were between that on down to the shortest stage of 4.4 miles.

Each runner had a follow vehicle directly behind it. The follow vehicle had other team members to give the runner moral support but also to be there in the event of an emergency. At the stages the RV Support Volunteers were there to check in the next runners, set up the baton transfer areas and help in any way they can. In addition to these RV Support people there was a medical station set up with EMT's available, ambulances, volunteers directing traffic, etc.

In addition to the runners and the follow vehicles they have a team of motorcycle riders who are in charge of safety on the race course. Since the race course is a public highway that cannot be closed down for the race it is important that certain rules be maintained for the safety of the people involved. There are certain routines for when a runner and follow vehicle need to pass a runner in front of them. The motorcycles, which consisted of guys on their Honda Goldwing bikes, have the authority to issue penalty slips for rule violations. These penalty points could hurt a teams final run times. Our job, at Stage Two, was to support the motorcycle riders. We had nine riders assigned to our area, which went from Stage Two through Stage Five. We had coffee, water, snacks, chairs, etc., set up for them to stop and rest throughout the day. Had it turned cold, which can easily happen in the desert, we would have used our motorhome to allow them to get inside to warm up periodically. (The other Motor Rest Station was at the highest point in the race at Spring Mountain. The segment of the race took place during the night time hours so their riders needed to comfort of the motor home that was stationed there.) Since we were parked in the desert during the race we had no RV hookup facilities. We relied on our onboard generator to keep everything going. Since we did not experience cooler weather down where we were our biggest concern was keeping the bottles of water cold for the guys when they came in.

To the best of my knowledge, this is what the B2V is all about. This is a very big deal in this part of the country and very important to the law enforcement community.