New Guinea Couple Plans To Visit On The Run

Mike and Angela Baker picked their destinations carefully when they planned their trip around the world this spring.

The Bakers, who live in Papua New Guinea, decided to fly to Hawaii, London, Paris, Singapore - and Spokane. Why Spokane? Mike Baker’s brother lives here.

There was an added attraction: Bloomsday.

“We are both quite keen on running,” said Mike Baker, who manages an oil palm plantation on the tip of Papua New Guinea.

This year to date, the Bakers are making the longest trek to run Bloomsday for fun, race coordinator Karen Heaps said. Last year, only about 1 percent of runners came from places other than Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana or Canada.

“They’re just a couple coming to do Bloomsday,” she said. “They’re not elite athletes.”

But they’re no slouches. Angela Baker, 32, predicted her time as one hour and five minutes for the 7.6-mile race May 7. Mike Baker, 35, said he’d run the race in an hour.

They’ve been training on the 350 kilometers of rough, gravel road crossing the oil palm plantation. Angela Baker might have a tough time recovering from her training, when she injured an ankle running on the gravel.

“She’ll probably make a good effort of it,” Mike Baker said.

The Bakers also will have to adjust to the weather. Papua New Guinea is on the equator, and running is a challenge.

“You get so wet you look as if you’ve been swimming,” Mike Baker said. “It’s humid tropics here, so it’s quite sticky. You get used to breathing down here. The humid air, it’s sort of like breathing in warm soup.”

It was luck that the Bakers’ trip coincided with Bloomsday. Mike Baker’s brother, Nick, moved to Spokane from north of London more than a year ago.

Mike and Angela Baker found out about Bloomsday from a racing book they bought in New Zealand.

“We had a look to see if there were any long-distance races in Spokane,” Mike Baker said. “We were going to come and see Nick, found out the race was on and decided to do it.”

Nick Baker and his wife, Jo, are British natives. They moved to Spokane because of Nick Baker’s job - he’s an information systems consultant for WR Grace and Co. They plan to stay here another three to five years.

The couple ran Bloomsday last year - sort of. They pushed a stroller with their son, then 2.

“There’s so many people taking part,” Jo Baker said. “When we finished it we said, ‘We’re not doing it again with a stroller.’ We’d never seen anything like it before.

“We both came away saying, ‘We’re going to do it again next year.’ But then I got pregnant.”

Nick Baker still plans to run. But he said he might not be able to keep up with his brother and sister-in-law.

Mike Baker said he was looking forward to the spectacle of 60,000 people running through the streets of Spokane. He probably won’t get that chance in London and Paris.

“It sounds incredible,” Mike Baker said. “We didn’t know all of that until we entered. I’m looking forward to joining in the whole thing. It sounds terrific.”