Running and writing
‘Runners Of The Nish’ highlights Abram-Village native’s fourth season with St. F.X. cross-country team
Alex Cyr’s passion for running and writing has come together. The 23-year-old son of Paul and Odette Cyr of Abram-Village recently had his first book published – Runners Of The Nish. “It’s the story of our 2016 cross-country season as the St. F.X. X-Men, which happened to be my fourth year of running at St. F.X.,” explained Cyr in an interview with the Journal Pioneer.
“The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write about the fillers in between. Not just the workouts and races, the social events of the team, the inter-team rivalries, the nights at the house when the boys are playing PlayStation and anything in between the races. Little by little, it became a story and I had a book in my hands.” Alex Cyr
Alex Cyr’s passion for running and writing has come together. The 23-year-old son of Paul and Odette Cyr of Abram-Village recently had his first book published – “Runners Of The Nish”. “It’s the story of our 2016 cross-country season as the St. F.X. X-Men, which happened to be my fourth year of running at St. F.X.,” explained Cyr in an interview with the Journal Pioneer. “It profiles our journey to the U Sports championships. . . from Day 1 of training camp to that (final) day in November on the Plains of Abraham at the championship. “That race happened to be the last time that our coach, Bernie Chisholm, brought a full team of men to the U Sports championships given that he is now retired.” After winning the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) championship that year, the X-Men finished 10th at nationals. Chisholm retired following the 2017 season after a 32-year career at St. F.X. He did coach St. F.X. at the 2017 nationals, but they did not compete in the team competition. Cyr said the book’s title is a play on words of Antigonish, N.S., where St. Francis Xavier University is located. “It’s what the locals call it,” said Cyr, who graduated from St. F.X. with a bachelor of kinesiology degree in 2017, and is now studying for a master’s degree in kinesiology with a focus on sports writing and journalism at the University of Windsor in Ontario.
Wrote blog
This was not Cyr’s first foray into writing. He previously wrote a running blog on the Internet. “I knew I wanted to try my hand at something a little bit longer, a little more detail and the opportunity presented itself in the summer after my third year,” explained Cyr, a 2013 graduate of Evangeline School. “Bernie brought me to his office and asked me if I wanted to make a few little chronicles of the season and compile stories to have something to remember the year by. “Now it makes sense because Bernie was planning his retirement.” Cyr admits once he got into working on the book, things “snowballed” pretty quickly. “The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write about the fillers in between. “Not just the workouts and races, the social events of the team, the inter-team rivalries, the nights at the house when the boys are playing PlayStation and anything in between the races. “Little by little, it became a story and I had a book in my hands.” The book is now available at Indigo in Summerside and in Charlottetown at The Running Room and Bookmark.