VIE EN MONTAGNE PAR/BY MOUNTAIN LIFE - Hiver | Winter 2020

21 Cédric Morriset prend son remède quotidien le long de la Rivière du Nord. / Cedric Morriset takes a daily dose of medication along the Rivere du Nord. ALAIN DENIS RUN, CEDRIC, RUN words :: Peter Oliver It began on November 24 of 2016, U.S. Thanksgiving Day of that year. Cedric Morisset was smitten by a Forrest-Gump-like inspiration. As Gump said in the famous movie, “I just felt like running,” and so it was with the 43-year-old Morisset. He had heard about something called the Thanksgiving Challenge promoted by Runner’s World magazine—to run 40 straight days between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Morisset decided to give it a go. The next day, he hit the road near his home in Blainville, just north of Montreal. The Thanksgiving Challenge rule was to run least a mile (1.6 kilometres) per day, but Morisset upped the baseline to two kilometres per day. As a one-time semi-pro hockey player and occasional runner, he had the athleticism and fitness to pull it off. Meeting the 40-day challenge proved easy enough, but at that point Morisset figured, in true Gump style: “Why should I stop?” He kept on running. “Maybe I can push this to 100 days,” he thought. He then aimed for six months, then one year. And so on. The routine kept on keeping on. Daily running became his entry into the community of so-called streakers—people who, like Morisset, make a point of running every day, with no exceptions for bad weather, illness, injury, or general malaise. There was a streakers’ website, runeveryday.com , and two official organizations, Streak Runners International and the U.S. Running Streak Association. In this tiny subculture, he found a virtual family for exchanging thoughts, progress reports, and camaraderie. Running became as much a part of his daily regimen, he says, “as brushing my teeth.” Maybe so, but daily brushing is easy. Daily running... not so much. Life gets in the way. Morisset’s job as regional director for the sports retailer Golf Town requires considerable travel, and on the road, at meetings or dinners with clients, a time window for running can be hard to find. That’s why he has run in the airport terminal in Zurich. He has run at weird hours of the day or night. There was the time, for example, at the Masters golf tournament, when, after a day on the course with one of Golf Town’s suppliers and a dinner complicated by plenty of wine, he suited up at 2am to run in the dark streets of Augusta, Georgia. So, after completing his third year of streaking, how far will he go? He is light years behind the all-time streak-meister, British Olympian Ron Hill; Morisset would have to run until he is 95 to break Hill’s record of more than 52 years. On Streak Runners International’s list, Morisset’s streak ranks 128, qualifying him, according to official SRI standards, as no more than a “neophyte.” Three years into this endeavour, he is barely a beginner. Maybe the long beard he grew, Forrest Gump style, for the first year of the streak is gone, but not the desire to keep running. “I’m very committed and a very stubborn guy,” he says. He figures only a disabling injury or car accident is going to stop him. But maybe a day will come when he repeats Gump’s run-ending words: “Just like that, my runnin’ days was over.” After all, even Hill’s streak eventually came to an end. “Why should I stop?” He kept on running. “Maybe I can push this to 100 days,” he thought. He then aimed for six months, then one year. And so on.