Ryan McLaughlin makes his way down the trail while taking part in the Bend Trail Series at Maston Trailhead on Thursday. (Ryan Brennecke/Bulletin photos)

“I didn’t really want to run that fast, that long,” Ryan McLaughlin said as he crossed the finish line at Maston Trailhead north of Bend on Thursday evening.

McLaughlin, 29 and of Bend, came in second in the first of four Bend Trail Series races, finishing the 5.3-mile course in 30 minutes, 35 seconds, exactly a minute behind winner Ryan Kaiser.

“I was planning on running hard and seeing how I felt today, and it was really great,” McLaughlin said. “I had some great competition from Ryan, who won the race and crushed it. Maybe I didn’t want to have the fastest run today, but getting a little push, a little pull, made it a way better Thursday afternoon.”

The Bend Trail Series, now in its second year, includes four races, each 4 to 7 miles long, on trails in and around Bend. The runs are held every other Thursday evening, and points are awarded to the top finishers each week.

“We have the Portland Trail Series that we’ve been doing since 2010 or 2011, and it’s the same concept,” said race director Renee Janssen. “We’ve been talking about doing this down here in Bend for years, and we finally just did it.”

The second race of the series will be held June 21 at Wanoga Sno-park, the third at Swampy Lakes on July 5 and the final race at Horse Butte on July 19. Janssen said that about 60 runners signed up for the entire series in advance, and runners can also sign up for an individual event on the day of the race. Another four-race “fall series” will start on Aug. 30.

“In Portland, we base each race at the same spot at Forest Park. It’s a huge park, there’s one trail that’s 31 miles, and a whole bunch of other trails, so the start and finish are always in the same place, but each route in the series is different,” Janssen said. “There’s no place like that here, so we go to the different trailheads. It’s a way for people who aren’t familiar with Maston to come out and run and not have to worry about getting lost or being by themselves and discover a trailhead that they may not have been to before.”

Like McLaughlin, women’s winner Jenn Randall signed up for the weekday trail race with the knowledge that their toughest run of the week would be at the Dirty Half Marathon on Sunday (Randall was the first woman to finish the trail half, and McLaughlin took seventh). But as both found, even an intentionally low-key race on a weeknight is still, well, a race.

“I ran it today as a good workout, and then I heard about the point system thing, and I’m super competitive, so that’s just an added bonus,” said Randall, 26, who finished Thursday’s race in 32:50.3. “I’m probably going to try to be competitive.”

Randall, who recently moved to Bend from Eugene, said she signed up for the series because she enjoyed the Oregon Track Club’s monthly 5K races in Eugene and was looking for a similar event in Bend.

“I don’t really like running long things,” Randall said. “I ran the Eugene Half Marathon, and I’m going to run the Dirty Half this weekend, just kind of for fun, but I was more of a middle-distance runner in college, and I prefer the mile, 5K. The short stuff. But trail runs like this are fun. It’s different from being on road, and there’s more of a fun aspect to it.”

Kaiser, the overall winner, is on the other end of the trail-running spectrum.

“I typically don’t run many races under 50K, which is 31 miles,” said Kaiser, 39 and of Bend. “My preference is 50 miles, 100 miles. So this is considerably shorter, but it’s painful in a different way, right? The longer-distance ones, it’s like a dull, muscular pain. And this is the acute, breathing heavy, heart-racing type of race.”

Like McLaughlin and Randall, Kaiser said the weekday series races are a good way to fit in a good speed workout. But, perhaps more important, it is a good way to make sure you see some friends during your workout.

“It’s so awesome they do these things,” Kaiser said, “because it adds a social level to the Bend running scene.”

—Reporter: 541-383-0305, vjacobsen@bendbulletin.com