Park City's Adam Loomis won Montana's trail run race on Sunday. Photo: The Rut // Anastasia Wilde @_anastasiawilde photography // courtesy of Adam Loomis

BIG SKY, Montana — Adam Loomis won the 50km Rut trail running race in Montana on Sunday with a time of 5 hours, 13.57 minutes, and tackling more than 11,000 vertical feet.

The Rut has been a bucket list race for 33-year-old Loomis for a while; however, he hadn’t been able to make it until this year, as he’d typically had a September 100-miler on the schedule.

He’s had a full schedule: three mountainous ultra races in seven weeks (Speedgoat 50km, Telluride, and the Rut 50k) for which he’s been on quite the winning streak.

“I’m really glad I had the opportunity to experience this event,” he said. “The whole weekend is a celebration of mountain running,” with seven races and 4,400 participants, ranging from the Runt Run, similar to Park City’s the Moose on the Loose kids series co-managed by Loomis, to various distances up to 50k.

Loomis seconds after crossing the Rut finish line first. Photo: The Rut // Anastasia Wilde, @_anastasiawilde // courtesy of Adam Loomis.

He came in knowing his fitness was likely enough to be competitive, but as he put it, “my freshness was more in question.” As the race played out, he felt strong and was able to pull into the lead ahead of Zach Perrin, of Bozeman, MT, on the two biggest climbs. From the top of Lone Peak on, he couldn’t see Perrin, and thought he’d had a decent gap on him. As it turned out, he never had more than four minutes.

By the last aid station, Perrin had whittled that down to under two minutes and he had Loomis in sight on the open and smooth descent. “I caught sight of Zach with around 5km to go, much to my surprise and dismay. I know Zach is incredibly fast, he ran D1 track and cross country for CU Boulder and was All American, so it was going to be extremely tough to hold him off at this point.”

Loomis was pushing as hard as he could, but sure enough, Perrin caught and passed him with about 2km to go. “I tried to hang on for all I could, but I quickly lost sight of him on the final short climb of the race.” Everything was in Perrin’s favor, and it looked like Loomis was locked into second. Then with just a short bit of the uphill remaining and 1km in the race, “I heard him, and realized he was walking and throwing up, an unfortunately common challenge of ultra running.”

“At this moment, I found one last surge, pushed over the top in the lead and pushed for everything I had on the short downhill into the finish,” Loomis said, “I was in a bit of shock at the finish. It was definitely a lesson on never letting up until it’s over – both in the sense that I thought I had the race won, and then again when I thought I lost that lead. I’ve never had an ultra come down to the wire like this one, and it certainly was exciting”

Adam Loomis. Photo: The Rut // Anastasia Wilde, @_anastasiawilde // courtesy of Adam Loomis.

Now Loomis is about to start a two-month training block towards Ultra Cape Town, South Africa’s 100km, part of the World Trail Majors series. This will be the most competitive race he’ll have entered to date and said, “I’m excited to see what I can do on a world stage.”

The World Trail Majors isn’t based on a model of hierarchy, instead its mission is more so focussed on the larger experience of the spirit of competition. Loomis’ dad, Paul Loomis M.D. (retired) who’s a ski instructor at Deer Valley these days, plans on accompany his son on the transcontinental journey.