Bloomsday Perennial: Jim Parry has relied on beer cans, a sling and ‘a lot of luck’ to compete in every race

Bloomsday Perennial Jim Parry once used two cans of beer to treat his wife’s sprained ankle mid-race, enabling her to finish on her own two feet.

Parry doesn’t remember what year the injury occurred, but it was fairly early in the history of Bloomsday, when first aid stations were few and far between. The couple had just finished running down a hill when his wife stumbled and sprained her ankle. Parry went looking for help.

“I ended up running up the hill, and everyone else was running down,” he said.

Parry was yelling for help, and a spectator at the top of the hill reached into his cooler and pulled out two ice cold beers, handing them to Parry. He took them and went back to his wife.

“I ran down and gave Linda one to drink and the other to put on her ankle,” he said.

Though the treatment was unconventional, it worked.

“She toughed it out and finished the race,” he said. “Maybe it was the beer she drank that did it.”

Parry, a Rogers High School graduate who was a Spokane Public Schools teacher for for 30 years, said that until Bloomsday came along, he hadn’t run much since his high school days.

“I was probably the slowest guy on the Rogers track team,” he said. “I never ran much after that.”

Parry saw an ad for the first Bloomsday a month before the race in 1977 and thought it would be fun. He was out of shape, however, so he tried his best to train for it. He was teaching during the day and had three young daughters at home, so he did laps around the local park at night to train. Along the way, he encountered someone else training for Bloomsday, and the two would chat as they ran laps .

Though the training helped, running at night didn’t help, Parry said. He was unprepared for the warm weather on the first race day and struggled to finish.

“Boy, it was hot,” he said. “I had to end up walking. I felt a little disappointed.”

But he was hooked . He was determined to come back the next year and do better. That goal would keep him coming back year after year, earning him the rare distinction of a Perennial.

“I tend to be a stick-to-it person,” he said. “I finally was able to run under an hour a couple times.”

As time went on, finishing Bloomsday became more than a casual event for him.

“It wasn’t a big deal then,” he said. “After 20 years, we all realized it was actually something. Can’t quit now.”

There was one injury that nearly sidelined him. About a dozen years ago, Parry played senior softball and was throwing a bucket of balls for batting practice.

“He hit a line drive into my hand, broke my hand,” he said. “This was a week before Bloomsday.”

Parry did Bloomsday with his arm in a sling that year so he could keep his injured hand close to his body and not have other runners bumping into it.

In the early years, Parry and his wife would host a party after Bloomsday, inviting their friends who also were runners.

“That was the fun part, gathering and telling stories,” he said.

Over the years, Parry was joined on the course occasionally by his wife and, when they got old enough, his daughters. Two of them still participate .

“Every spring, my daughter and I train,” he said. “Mostly now we just go out for an hour-and-a-half walk. We run a few blocks here and there.”

Not only does Parry have his finisher T-shirts safely stored away, he also has the canvas pair of Joe Lapchick Playmaker high top basketball shoes he wore in the first race. Sometimes he hangs up his shirts on his front porch as a display before the race, bringing them in every night to keep them safe.

Parry, who will turn 80 two weeks before the 2026 race, said he’s grateful to still be in good enough health to keep doing Bloomsday.

“So far I’ve lucked out,” he said. “There’s a lot of luck involved to make it to 50 years, I hope.”