PROFILE--Stefan Fekner has been running for 40 years

(Apr. 2020) Stefan Fekner has been running in and around Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for 40 years. A city planner who doesn't drive a car, he gets around on foot. (And occasionally on bike). Fekner, now 67, has a marathon PR of 2:28, but for many years specialized in ultra-running, particularly the 100K distance. He often used Thoreau and other similar thinkers to inspire him "to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Career-profession? City Planner 1978-2014, Edmonton, Alberta. Awards: Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) 1995. Eric W. Thrift Award of Planning. Excellence Grand Prize; Alberta Association CIP Award of Merit – 2008 and 2009.

Part time employment/activities: University of Alberta Faculty of Extension online instructor in Applied Land Use Planning; elections (municipal, provincial, federal) as registration officer; volunteer at track and field meets. 

When did you start running and why? In high school, we did not have a track, but I managed to run around Victoria Park and one year, a 3-mile run on the streets. I hated it. In 1980, I saw