SISTERS — 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.”

It didn’t seem likely, not on a day when temperatures crept upward of 70 degrees in Sisters.

“It was warm,” said Kami Semick of Bend, winner of the women’s division of the 60K race. “It’s kinda hard to go from running in 50 degrees to 70 degrees in just a couple of days like we’ve had here.”

Semick — the top female finisher of the Peterson Ridge 60K in four of the race’s five years — won it for the first time with a new name. She said Sunday that she and her husband of eight years, Tyson Pardue, have decided to both go by the combined last name Semick-Pardue.

So Kami Semick is now Kami Semick-Pardue. The new name seemed to suit her just fine on Sunday, as she clocked in with a time of 4:22:17 that placed her eighth overall in the 60K. Semick-Pardue said she is training hard for the Miwok 100K Trail Race, to be held May 3 in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She won the Miwok race in both 2005 and 2007, and she has a high goal in mind for next month.

“I’m hoping to get a course record,” she said. “I liked my pace today, so maybe I have a chance.”

The only chance Emily Kalenius had of placing first among the women in Sunday’s 30K race required an assist from her husband with the Corvallis couple’s dog.

“I was running with my husband and my dog,” said Kalenius, 28, “and about mile 17, the poor guy …”

She was referring to the dog, a yellow Labrador named Aslan.

“My husband (Will) is a much faster runner than I am,” said Kalenius moments after finishing. “But when the dog kind of got tired, he told me to go on ahead. … I hope they get in OK.”

They did. And when they did, they were greeted by the women’s 30K champion. Emily Kalenius finished with a time of 2:28:15, well ahead of runner-up Amy Petersen, 38, of Bend, whose time was 2:38:10.

“I’ve never run a 30K before,” said Kalenius, who noted that her longest previous race was the 2006 Portland Marathon. She said she wasn’t too impressed with her time Sunday, but only until she learned that the 30K course actually measured out to more like 19.5 miles — nearly a full mile longer than 30 kilometers.

“That makes me feel a little bit better,” she said. “It was a great trail, but I thought maybe it was a little long.”

Sunday’s races produced a repeat winner among the men, as Andy Martin of Bend finished first in the 30K for the second year in a row. His winning time of 2:03:27 was more than a minute faster than runner-up Richard Bolt, 37, of Portland (2:04:48), but it was well off the course record of 1:54:18 that Martin established last year in the fifth running of the Peterson Ridge Rumble.

“I wanted to enjoy the beautiful weather and the beautiful day,” Martin said as his sons Charlie, 6, and Nate, 2, joined their dad at the finish. “It was just a great day to be out on the trail.”

A week earlier, Martin, 33, broke his own course record in the Horse Butte Run, a 10-mile trail race staged southeast of Bend. In two weeks, he plans to race in the Big Sur International Marathon on the California coast south of San Francisco.

“Last year here, I came out and ran as fast as I could,” Martin said of his performance in the 2007 Rumble. “I wanted to set a record to challenge runners on this course for years to come.

“But I was just here to have fun today.”

So was Rod Bien. The 35-year-old from Bend was the defending Peterson Ridge 60K champion, though he didn’t expect to contend for a repeat.

“We have a new baby (a son, just four weeks old), and I just opened a new running store (Fleet Feet Sports in Bend, in which he and Meissner are partners) last Friday,” said Bien. “So I haven’t got the miles in I would like to have.”

Still, competing in the Rumble for the fifth time, he finished third in the 60K with a time of 4:04:18.

“I’m real pleased with how I ran,” he said. “I didn’t have quite enough mileage in, didn’t quite have that extra gear today.

“But I did OK,” Bien added with a deep breath and a smile. “I didn’t want to embarrass myself — not when I’m opening a running store.”

As with any trail race staged on rough, uneven and, in the case of Sunday’s race, snow-slickened running surfaces, the Peterson Ridge Rumble produced its share of spills, resulting in an ice pack here and a bruised backside there. And at least a few participants took wrong turns on the course, and some of them dropped out of the race.

Still, a total of 268 runners (154 in the 30K, 114 in the 60K) finished.

The Peterson Ridge Rumble originated in 2003 as a 17-mile run. It expanded to a two-distance race the following year and continues as a fundraiser for the Sisters High School cross-country program, for which race coordinator Meissner serves as a volunteer assistant.

“We expect to raise about $4,000 for the cross-country team,” Meissner said Sunday. “They’re great kids — all out here volunteering on the course today. So I love writing that big fat check.”