As Police Chief Charles McCarron cleared the crowd, Lewiston Mayor Louis J. Brann raised the starting pistol. At the crack of the gun, the field took off in full sprint down Lisbon Street. “Like a pack of unleashed greyhounds” the runners, all of whom were male, “set a heart-breaking pace thru the lanes formed by thousands and thousands of people.”
To Mike Ryan, a 26- year-old track and field coach at Bates College who at the time held the Boston Marathon record, it was a sight to behold. “The runners with their clean-cut, light muscular bodies, and different colored uniforms and emblems, presented a sight for the gods, and reminded one of the Greek athletes of whom so much is read in history.”
The Lewiston Journal Ten Mile Road Race, likely the first amateur distance contest of its kind in Maine, was Ryan’s idea. Raised in New York City, he had run with the Irish American Club, among the many athletic clubs active at the turn of the 20th century. There was a bonanza of sporting events during the era, including a minor mania for marathons which were particularly popular in cities in the Northeast. (At the time the term was synonymous with long distance races of varying lengths. The marathon would soon be standardized at 26.2 miles.)
After settling in Maine, Ryan was struck by the dearth of competitive running opportunities for young men. To Ryan it was an entirely reversible tragedy that innately talented runners were “going to seed” for lack of impetus to train and compete. “Every now and then a sprinter or long distance man is heard from in one of the Maine cities and towns who is the champion of the countryside. He has trimmed all comers in his own back dooryard, but has never had a chance to meet the champion of some other yard.” The Lewiston Journal posited that the proposed race would provide the first chance for such unsung local runners to compete on the same field.
When the Journal announced the contest in mid-March 1915, it stipulated that no fees would be charged to runners or spectators because the race was solely intended as “a stimulation of the running game in Maine.” Organizers would solicit participants from regional athletic clubs, YMCAs and colleges. Runners from Bowdoin and Colby would represent their respective institutions to compete with coach Ryan’s young men from Bates.
For the novice runners he wished to inspire, Mike Ryan published a series of training advice columns in the Journal between March and May. He prescribed a program that rewarded patience and hard work. It entailed a gradual build-up integrating short runs, long walks, as well as mixed sessions of walking and jogging. Ryan counseled focus on form before speed — an easy gait, rolling off the balls of the feet, arms swinging naturally in rhythm with legs.
Throughout the process he emphasized consuming a wholesome diet, learning “how to breathe deeply, getting the air down to the lowest part of the lungs,” and sleeping eight to 10 hours each night. Tobacco and alcohol were to be shunned. Improper mastication, exposure to cold drafts, and failing to thoroughly towel off after bathing could likewise jeopardize one’s regimen. For the feet, Ryan suggested a nightly soak in rock salt and vinegar dissolved in hot water.
Ryan dismissed the assumption that running dangerously taxed the body. He also eschewed the notion that only a tiny minority of gifted athletes could aspire to run competitively. “Regarding distance running and those best adapted to it,” he maintained “it is just as natural to run as it is to walk. Therefore any one who is healthy and will develop his legs, arms, heart, lungs and other vital organs to the proper extent can run long distance and he doesn’t need any particular kind of a physique to do so.”
One could also learn to run fast. “Speed, like any other faculty can be developed,” Ryan asserted. But it would require dedicated exertion. The key was to incorporate hard sprints within training runs. Those persistent in this practice “will find after a while that what was his greatest pace becomes his meanest.”
In May the Journal published a map of the circuitous 10-mile route. The race would begin downtown, cover country roads, pass the Fair Grounds, and finish with a lap before the grandstands at the Lewiston Athletic Park. (It’s now the site of the Lewiston Middle School.) The winding route lent to multiple viewing opportunities. Because even the fastest would take roughly an hour to complete the course, eager spectators could enjoy several vantages of the race by walking or taking a trolley between points.
The Journal promised much to view. Spectators would marvel at “types of sterling manhood,” each “in his finest fettle, conditioned and trained to stand the grind” of a varied, hilly course designed to be “a true test of runners.” Organizers had also arranged for multiple prizes; even those trailing the pace-setter would have reason to compete until the very last. The public could expect not one, but multiple thrilling finishes.
The 20 men who started the Lewiston Journal Ten Mile Road Race included an out of town favorite, Clifton Horne of Dorchester, Mass., who had placed second in the Boston Marathon that April. Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby runners were represented, as were local striders, such as Oswald Sparsam, who would enjoy a long tenure as track and field coach at Edward Little High School.
A photo from the start of the race confirms the Journal’s description of a mass of spectators crowding the square at the head of Lisbon Street. When the starter’s pistol fired, runners and accompanying vehicles sped along Lisbon Street toward Bleachery Hill. Several automobiles carried race officials and journalists along the route. While this aided observation of the race, as the road surface transitioned to dirt, and after dozens of vehicles joined the procession, the exhaust fumes and prodigious clouds of dust proved a noxious combination, more challenging to the runners than even the warm temperature.
Despite this, Horne, whom Mike Ryan dubbed “the human race horse from Dorchester,” took an early and comfortable lead. After ascending Bleachery Hill, Horne led the charge left onto East Avenue, then right onto Sabattus Road, followed by a sharp left onto Russell Street. From Russell, the runners turned right onto the rolling hills of College Street. A large flag marked the five-mile point on College, which Horne passed at a pace of five minutes and 21 seconds per mile “loping along unconcerned.” Behind him, however, was a two-man scrimmage for second place between Bates College’s Willis Lane, a large and graceful runner, and Colby’s Ezra Wenz.
Most in the remaining field appeared strong at this point, with the exception of a fatigued entrant from Boston who was disqualified for accepting a ride from a motorist. Surprisingly large numbers of sightseers cheered the runners even off in the countryside as the course directed them from College Street to Stetson Road where organizers had anticipated few spectators. Among those trailing the leaders, a prep-schooler from Wiscasset especially appreciated “the good fellowship and cheery encouragement” shown even to out-of-towners.
The throngs thickened as the racers pounded back on Main Street toward town. Horne was the first onto Frye Street, where viewers filled the sidewalks from Frye mansion to College Street. Trailing by just a minute or so was the real race. Wenz and Lane were trading leads, sprint after “furious sprint.” Bearing a hard right from Frye onto College Street, the two charged along College before swinging sharply to the left onto Sabattus. Wenz held the lead as they began the gradual incline toward Campus Avenue, in view of the five thousand packing the grandstands at the Lewiston Athletic Park.
Watching the battling runners maneuver a final difficult left, the finish line crowd roared for both Horne’s breaking of the tape, at 59 minutes and 40 seconds, as well as the appearance of Lane in the park. While Horne took the $50 grand prize, the Bates runner had managed a last effort up the hill, leaving Wenz 100 yards behind. For second place, Lane secured the Mystic Watch; Wenz earned the A. L. Grant Pin for third. Harold Moreau of Berlin, N.H., was the fourth to enter the park, in position for the L.J. Brann Cup awarded to the first novice finisher. A “frenzy of applause” followed as Oswald Sparsam closed in a vain dash to catch Moreau, heartened that the Lewiston entrant, only four minutes behind the winner, would claim the Barnstone Cup for “First Local Man.”
In all, 11 crossed the finish line of a race hailed as an unqualified success. The Journal estimated that some 40,000 had watched the competition. Far from dispirited, even the 11th runner to enjoy the din at the finish line counted himself among the many who hoped for a reprise the following year.
The Journal would indeed organize a second, and last, race on Memorial Day in 1916. It’s unclear why the race, which Bowdoin’s track coach considered to be “on the way to being one of the big long distance races of New England,” did not become an annual spectacle. It may simply have been too daunting to continue to organize. The boom in recreational running that began in the 1970s, of course, expanded interest in local road races, reflected in the current crop of weekend 5Ks and fun runs we now so enjoy.
Within this long tradition, the Lewiston Journal Ten Mile Road is a historic, if largely forgotten, antecedent to our modern running culture, a seminal event in Maine’s running history that Lewiston and Auburn can claim pride in today, just as the Twin Cities did a century ago.
Eben Miller is a professor of history at Southern Maine Community College and a graduate of Bates College. He lives in Lewiston.
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