James Joyce Ramble 10K - Dedham Massachusetts

With theatrical flair, the James Joyce Ramble takes runners on a 6.2 mile literary tour

By Jon Marcus Saturday, May 24, 2008

The actor standing on an apple crate booming lines from Ulysses is probably the best indication that the James Joyce Ramble is not like any other 10K. Or maybe it’s the identical twins who read in unison from Finnegan’s Wake near the Dedham courthouse, where in 1927 Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Throughout the race, participants are serenaded by 25 actors dressed in period costumes, reading the dead Irish author’s intricate prose. In the final mile, the actors read, fittingly, from The Dead.

“The jocks and the geeks—the literary and the athletic – it’s just this amazing collision of worlds that we think don’t go together,” said Suzie Sims-Fletcher, who was standing at mile two reading passages from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to passing runners.

Race director Martin Hanley likes to call the Ramble the only theatrical event in which the performers stand still while the audience moves. His ancestors en mmigrated from always, Ireland, two generations ago, and he invoked Joyce—one of that nation’s most celebrated authors—to attract Boston’s vast population of Irish runners. “It’s part of your DNA and you want to celebrate it,” says Hanley.

The event also provides a stage for Hanley to raise awareness about causes he feels passionately about. Over the years, he has dedicated the Ramble to various writers and journalists, from Czech playwright and president Vaclav Havel to slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

“I’m trying to get runners to think about things—human rights, and this war,” Hanley says. “Can you challenge people to be more engaged in their world? I don’t know. But I think the running community is a little bit more informed. These are people who think.”

Whether it’s the issues, the literature, or the theatrics of the event, Hanley seems to be on to something. This year, the Ramble celebrated its 25^th anniversary and drew 1,671 runners, many of them still wobbly from the Boston Marathon, held just a few days earlier.

The fact that the event is more spectacle than race “actually takes the pressure off,” says runner Jim English, 56. “This is more fun, less intense. Nobody feels like they have to kill this one.”

All of the top 10 female finishers and all but one of the top 10 male finishers were New Englanders. Mark Miller, 27, led the men’s field at 30:18, while first-place woman Mary Proulx, 27, broke the tape at 36:01; both were cross-country standouts at Keene State College, and they’re engaged to be married.

Run it next year: April 26