Corpus Christi special warfare candidates used Beach to Bay as preparation for elite Air Force military training pipelines.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — While thousands of runners tackled the 49th annual Beach to Bay Relay Marathon on Saturday, one group on the course was preparing for far more than a race.

Several Corpus Christi-area Air Force Special Warfare candidates used the annual Armed Forces Day tradition as part of the demanding preparation process required before entering elite military training pipelines.

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“Everyone’s heard of basic training — but for Special Operations candidates, the training starts months before boot camp,” said Technical Sgt. Devondra Brown, a local Air Force Special Warfare recruiter.

Brown and Staff Sgt. Chris Casagrande train candidates at the Cabaniss Athletic Complex in Corpus Christi, helping prepare them physically and mentally before they ever leave for basic training.

“Being able to be humble, approachable, and credible, that is something that can be taught, and so we try to do it at this level prior to them going to basic training,” Brown said.

Casagrande, a Special Warfare Talent Scout, said preparing candidates for the pipeline can take years.

“My job is to train, develop, and mentor candidates for the special warfare training pipelines, which are really rigorous pipelines, usually last around I’d say two to two and a half years, and my job is to find them and prepare them for that,” Casagrande said.

This week, that preparation included Beach to Bay — the annual relay marathon founded in 1976 to honor service members on Armed Forces Day.

“It’s going to be fun to see them going through something really rigorous and have to endure something tough in this heat,” Casagrande said before Saturday’s race.

Also competing Saturday morning was a team of Tactical Air Control Party specialists, commonly known as TAC-P airmen, from Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.

“Our job is basically to embed into Army conventional units, or Special Forces units, or Ranger units, and provide close air support by talking to aircraft and calling in air strikes, kind of on the front lines, or close to the action,” said Technical Sgt. Thomas De Los Santos, a TAC-P specialist from Lackland Air Force Base.

Though De Los Santos was not involved in recruiting candidates during the event, he still had a message for anyone interested in the career field.

“Do you like doing cool things at the government’s expense?” De Los Santos joked. “If so, Air Force TAC-P is probably for you.”

For Brown, the most rewarding part of the job is watching local candidates grow throughout months of preparation before eventually reaching selection.

“We’re working with them for sometimes three, six months, nine months, so to see that character development you can’t get that anywhere else,” Brown said. “Or to have them get through selection and reach back out and say, ‘Sergeant Brown, this is amazing.’ You can’t really beat that.”