The James Joyce Ramble is two challenges in one: running and reading the late Irish writer's difficult prose.
 
     The annual Dedham road race allows pavement pounders, literary aficionados and those who are a bit of both to bond in a 10K run as actors in period costumes read aloud from Joyce's works.
 
     ``It's the only theatrical event where the actors stand perfectly still and the audience is moving constantly,'' said Ramble founder Martin Hanley.
 
     Twenty-one years ago, Hanley and some friends were running races and growing tired of hearing loud rock music blaring from roadside speakers. At the same time, Hanley was struggling through ``Finnegans Wake.''
 
     ``We wanted an event a little more compelling. Why not name a running event after James Joyce?'' he decided.
 
     The first Ramble was a five-mile course that drew 244 runners. Limited resources forced Hanley to scrounge for water stations and route markers, but the Ramble proved successful and became an annual tradition.
 
     Hanley added actors three years into the race.
 
     ``One of our participants, about two years into the event, went out with a well-thumbed copy of `Ulysses.' I saw him on the course turning around and reading to the runners - he was running backwards. I never found out who he was,'' Hanley said. ``I thought maybe I could prevail upon some of my actor friends to dress up in period costumes and have them stand on apple boxes (and read).''
 
     Today, 40 actors take to the course, reading designated Joyce works for each mile: ``Finnegans Wake'' at the first one, ``Ulysses'' at the second mile, ``A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' at the third, ``Exiles'' at mile four, ``Dubliners'' at mile five and, fittingly, ``The Dead'' at the sixth mile.
 
     ``(Some of the runners) will catch the end of a phrase and yell it back at you as they go by,'' said Jim Cooke, an actor who has read at the Ramble for almost a decade. ``Now and again there will be people who will gather where you're reading.''
 
     Since its inception, the Ramble has raised more than $300,000 for the Claudia Adams-Barr Program at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and each race is dedicated to an author who was unjustly imprisoned. This year, each runner's bib will bear the name of a United States soldier who died in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The Ramble's after-party at Dedham's Endicott Estate boasts a 2-ton pasta meal, literary trivia and a performance by singer-songwriter Dennis Brennan, but the connection between the runners and actors remains the main attraction. 
      ``The reaction of the runners may be most gratifying,'' Cooke said. ``Running is a basically inherent silly thing to do - you wear silly little shorts and run and get out of breath. Runners are reassured to see someone doing something sillier than they're doing.''