Volkman ran hard to reach milestone
Published online on Tuesday, Jun. 09, 2009
My
favorite John Volkman story is not the time he
lost five toenails during a race and went into shock.
It
isn't the time he was so distraught that he and a girlfriend had broken up that
he lost 20 pounds and ran his best marathon in years.
It
isn't the time he ran two marathons in two states on the same weekend. (He's
done that twice, actually.)
It
isn't even the time he and his brother Bill flew to Arkansas
No,
my favorite John Volkman story is
that he has written two somewhat noteworthy books, one of which sold 3,000
copies, and that seems quite a lot for a book about "collaborative library
research."
It
is amazing what we don't know about each other.
Many
of us are great listeners. Many of us are great talkers. But there are few who
do both well. Volkman is one of those people.
His
stories roll downhill, in the sense that he gets excited telling them and they
get faster and faster. But you can also see he's paying attention when you
talk, not just thinking of what he's going to say next. That's too much of a
rarity these days.
Volkman
makes today's Sports section because Sunday in Casper, Wyo., he ran his 100th
marathon, an accomplishment only two other Fresno Juan Sobenes .
Lindsey
ran 114 marathons before retiring. Sobenes was 68 years old when he ran his
100th in Boston
There's
no telling how many Volkman will run. He has three more this fall -- Omaha , Neb. , Detroit and Philadelphia --
before he's run a marathon in all 50 states and Washington , D.C. Europe . With
classic librarian efficiency and planning, he says he's been "waiting for
the exchange rate to get better."
Not
that he's had time to go abroad anyway. Volkman has run 47 marathons since
2001. At age 58, he's relatively young for having already reached this
milestone, and his Wyoming Casper
The
man didn't limp to 100; he sprinted downhill.
As
for possibly running on all seven continents, he has no interest in going
anywhere near Antarctica .
"You
know there are 10 provinces in Canada
Ah
yes, there's always the northern tour.
After
playing basketball and baseball in high school, Volkman didn't start running
until age 30, after a teacher at Sanger High dared him to run the local 10k.
From there, he was hooked, training so hard that within a year, the spring of
1981, he broke three hours in his first marathon (2:58.43).
After
graduating from San Jose State, Volkman moved to the Central Valley from
Calistoga to be librarian at Sanger High. He did that for 10 years, then was
librarian at Hoover
Then,
in 1998, he applied to be the coach for the local chapter of Team in Training,
and since then, the Fresno
"You
look at old pictures," he says, "and you don't even recognize some of
them."
And
he gets paid to do it, funding all his own marathon trips and paying off his
house early, which is, of course, not why he does it, but still pretty nice.
"I
get double satisfaction," he says. "You just go down the list. It's
just incredible personal stories, peoples' lives who I've been able to be
involved with."
He
has plenty of his own stories -- that time his shoes were too tight in an
ultramarathon and all his toenails fell off. Every fast step downhill sent pain
screaming through his body. But he kept going fast. It's the only way he knows.
The
columnist can be reached at mjames@fresnobee.com
or (559) 441-6217. Read his blog at www.fresno
