A true American Ninja Warrior: Former Petaluman conquers the TV show course

It was unintentional, but former Petaluman Brendan Couvreux trained for his appearance on the NBC show American Ninja Warrior every single day for years.

“My wife and I use running as our transportation,” he explains. “We put our two kids in a stroller and run every where we go. It’s our transportation.”

The running and his training for his passion of rock climbing were the only preparation he needed to be one of only three athletes to complete the daunting American Ninja Warrior course in the regional finals competition held in Kansas City.

Although the event occurred in April, it wasn’t shown on television until last Monday night. All involved were pledged to secrecy until the program aired.

Couvreux’s effort earned him a spot in the National finals which were held in Las Vegas last month. The results of that competition won’t be revealed until it is telecast. Couvreux isn’t sure when that will be, which is understandable since his active family doesn’t own a television.

In fact, he had never seen the program until his co-workers at the fire station near Denver where he works as a firefighter/paramedic began urging him to enter the competition.

“They kept egging me on for several years, until I finally gave in and decided to give it a try,” Couvreux explains.

Not only did he give it a try, he conquered the course, something that only three of all the Kansas City contestants were able to accomplish.

He says the course, daunting for even the best conditioned and coordinated of athletes, was, for him, not all that difficult.

Without even a hint of brashness, he says honestly, “Most of the obstacles were not too bad. It was just fun.”

The most difficult for him was the body prop where athletes are required to prop their bodies between two steel beams with hands on one side and feet on the other as they move along the obstacle. Couvreux passed the test by occasionally propping himself with one hand while he rested and shook the other.

He says it was a technique he uses often in his rock climbing.

He notes he was nervous at the start of the competition, but never felt any pressure. “I wanted to finish, but I wasn’t going to obsess about it,” he says. “The main goal was to have fun.”

His wife, Chloe, shares her husband’s enthusiasm for an active lifestyle that includes running and especially rock climbing. Their intention was to enter the competition together, but a few weeks before the taping, Chloe injured her knee in an accident and decided it was better not to chance further injury.

Chloe and the couple’s two sons, Sky, 4, and Tao, 3, became Couvreux’s biggest boosters. It was Sky, who after watching athlete after athlete tumble out of the competition, gave his father the wisest words of advice.

“Daddy, I don’t want you to fall in the water,” he said.

The American Ninja Warrior competition might be a life’s highlight for some athletes, but for Couvreux it was just a diversion in what has always been an eventful life.

The first nine years of that life were spent living on a boat as his parents traveled from France where he was born, to the United States and took their time doing it, traveling to various parts of the world.

“I am super thankful for my parents for giving me such and amazing opportunity,” he says.

The first land home Couvreux and his brother, Sean, came when the family arrived in the United States and settled in Petaluma in 1991. Although he grew up in Petaluma, only a few of his contemporaries had a chance to get to know him because he attended Lycée Français in San Rafael and spent his weekends in sailing competitions on the bay.

Eventually, his enthusiasm turned from sailing to rock climbing. “I was looking for something new and different,” he explains. Rock climbing was what brought him and Chloe together, and the two have pretty much built their lives around the sport.

“We love it,” Couvreux says. “We get to challenge our selves physically and mentally. We get to be outdoors. We get to travel. It is really cool.”

The sport even dictated where they chose to live - in Colorado, which offers some of the best climbing opportunities in the United States.

Couvreux’s profession as a firefighter/paramedic is right in line with the perpetual-motion way he leads his life. “I love it,” he says. “It is a great job. You get to do really cool things and help people out. When you go to work, you never know what you are going to be doing that day.”

As for another try at American Ninja Warrior competition, Couvreux says, “I don’t know, but I’m leaning toward no. “It was fun on the course, but it is not my life’s goal to be on a TV show.”

Besides, he is already off to something else. This weekend he will run in the White River 50, a 50-mile endurance race near near Mt. Rainier in Washington over a course that raises and falls a staggering 8,700 feet.

It is a challenge, but less so for a man whose favorite commute vehicle is a leg-propelled baby stroller.

(Contact John Jackson at johnie.jackson@arguscourier.com)