by Bill Bigelow

SISTERS, Oregon— Dan Olmstead was tired. Not so much from running; he actually looked relatively fresh at midday Sunday after winning the 60-kilometer division of the Peterson Ridge Rumble. No, it wasn’t the running that made Olmstead weary.

It was the chasing.

The distance runner from Eugene, who turned 36 on Saturday, recalled spending the last several years striving to meet the Olympic trials qualifying standard in the marathon. He got within four minutes of the qualifying time in the 26.2-mile event.

“But I just didn’t know,” he said Sunday, “where that other four minutes was going to come from.”

So he hit the trail.

“I just started getting into it (trail running) in the last year,” said Olmstead. “I really like it. Today was fun. This course is gorgeous.”

Sunday was his first entry in the annual Peterson Ridge Rumble, a two-distance race — 60K and 30K, roughly — staged on hiking paths and mountain-bike trails south and southwest of Sisters.

Olmstead crossed the finish line on the track at Sisters Middle School’s Reed Stadium in a time of 3 hours, 51 minutes, 25 seconds, and won by a comfortable margin over runner-up Paul Saladino, 30, of Bend, whose time was 4:02:35.

“It’s time for me to start enjoying running again,” said Olmstead. “Running trails is kind of a different attitude. I think I’m going to focus on trails for a while.”

Race coordinator Sean Meissner noted that the top times in the 60K were deceptively fast because the course was in fact not a full 60K. Snow at the higher elevations of the planned route forced organizers to shorten the race to about 34 miles — or about 3.2 miles short of 60 kilometers.

“Distances are rarely exact in a trail race like this,” Meissner explained. “If people want to run 60K, they can run a few more laps on the track at the finish. But I’ll bet no one takes me up on that offer.”

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