Bloomsday Perennial: Race for North Central cross country runner was about finishing, not winning

Jim Grier was a sophomore at North Central High School when the first Bloomsday race happened in 1977. Running, running both cross country and track. It was only natural that he signed up.

“There was quite the buzz,” he said. “Our coach, Len Long, was the one who encouraged us to support it.”

As Grier recalls, there was only one water station that first Bloomsday year, which turned out to be unseasonably warm. There was also one finisher chute at the end, which caused a backlog among the nearly 1,200 racers to cross the finish line. Grier’s time was clocked at 61 minutes.

“I never broke an hour because I was waiting in line,” he said.

Still, Grier came back for more. He was excited that Boston Marathon champion Bill Rodgers was coming to the second race in 1978.

“You got to see these guys,” Grier said. “It was just a fun atmosphere. You’re out there with like-minded people. It was the camaraderie; it was the community.”

Grier remembers seeing a story about a New York City Marathon runner, a boxer, who had done 30 of the marathons. That helped inspire him to keep going with Bloomsday.

“After about 10, almost everybody I knew had fallen off,” he said.

Quite a few of them were just concerned with their finishing times and didn’t want to go through the bother if they couldn’t get a good time, Grier said. He didn’t care about his time, so he just kept going.

Over the years, Bloomsday became a family affair. His wife, Mary, joined him for more than a dozen races, and so did his children when they got old enough.

His sister has completed about 30 Bloomsdays, and the two were often competitive.

“There were a lot of years I didn’t train,” Grier said. “I just went out and did it. She trained.”

He recalls one year when he spotted his sister ahead of him in the crowd just before the finish line. He sped up, and for some reason she turned around and saw him.

“She turns, she screams, we dart for the finish line,” he said. “I beat her.”

In 2010, Grier did Bloomsday with his father, son, grandson and wife. He counts that among his favorite Bloomsdays. His mother, Marie, had died a month before the race. She is buried at Greenwood Memorial Terrace, which is along the Bloomsday race course.

“As we went by there, my father blew her a kiss,” Grier said.

A few months later, his father died and was buried next to his beloved wife. Grier said he’s grateful he got to do that Bloomsday with his father.

“It was his first one and the only one he ever did,” he said.

Grier lost his physical fitness over time, though, but as a Perennial, he still was committed to doing Bloomsday every year. But in 2017, he started making changes and would end up losing 110 pounds.

After that, he made staying fit his goal. He started doing triathlons in 2018 and has run several Ironman and half Ironman races. He’s done the Seattle to Portland Bike Ride twice and plans to do it again this summer.

Of course, the 50th Bloomsday is also on his schedule.

“Wherever I’ve worked, I always ask for that day off,” he said.

Grier carefully saves mementos from each race. He wears his finisher T-shirt the day after the race, then washes it and carefully packs it away in his cedar chest full of such shirts. He keeps a scrapbook with his bib number, results postcard and pictures from each race. He has Bloomsday pictures, posters and medals hanging on the wall in his basement.

Grier will turn 66 only two weeks before the 50th race and said he fully intends to keep going. He said he’d like to be the “Last Man Standing,” a term the Bloomsday Perennials have for the last active Perennial.

Grier has four children and nine grandchildren and said he hopes to recruit them all to do the 50th race with him. One granddaughter is scheduled to have hip surgery a month before the race, but Grier is determined to do everything he can to get her there, even if he has to push her in a wheelchair.

“She thinks she has an out,” he said.