Bagpipes in tune for racers

BIG MOUNTAIN — THE horizon was still a tangerine-colored smudge when Ted Olson began playing his bagpipes. He stood alone on a rise overlooking the start line of the 37th annual Deseret Morning News Marathon.

Ten minutes later, he finished to popular acclaim. Marathon runners, you can find. There were about 550 of them at the crest of Big Mountain on Monday. But pipers are a rarity. When one shows up on a hill and begins playing, people listen.

"Music," Olson said, "can be very stirring. So I hope that's the effect."

Olson completed his third marathon Monday, by the dawn's early light. He didn't actually run 26 miles. Instead, he drove to the top of the mountain, pulled his pipes out of the trunk and sent the racers on their way. The most exercise he got was tuning the instrument.

Playing to an audience dressed in tank tops and running shoes is something he started two years ago. Now it's a tradition. Amid the smell of the mountains — not to mention the smell of adrenaline — he plays to ward off the jitters. As the final note fades down the canyon, the starter calls in a low-key send-off, "Ready, set, GO!" and they're gone.

Don't all good armies go to battle with the sound of music in their ears?

Olson is no running fanatic. He's never participated in a marathon and doesn't plan to. He doesn't even run short distances. "I've got a treadmill at home," he said. "I walk on it. Sometimes."

That doesn't keep him from contributing to one of the country's most venerable races. He had a high school friend who played bagpipes, which Olson thought was cool. So he asked the friend to teach him how to play. Olson has been playing ever since. He even performs in a band called the Wasatch & District Pipe Band.

About three years ago, Morning News race organizers decided it would be nice to get the runners off to a bonny Scottish start by having someone play bagpipes. A volunteer said he knew someone who might help.

Soon, Olson was in a kilt and standing alongside several hundred slightly emaciated, hard-core distance runners.

That first year, Olson says, the temperature was around 45 degrees. The next two years it was 15 or 20 degrees warmer.

"That first year, it was just cold," he said. "It's something else to be up there in 45 degrees wearing a kilt."

The idea of using bagpipes to inspire isn't new. Though the instrument is most often associated with Scotland, some historians say a form of bagpipes was used in ancient Egypt. They were also employed to inspire the Roman infantry. Some scholars believe Scotland was introduced to bagpipes by the Romans. Others say they were imported from Ireland.