Mark Pinckard just keeps breaking records.
The Boundary Bay masters track and field athlete brought together a team of runners from across the country to break the men’s 60, 4x800m world record at the Canadian Masters Track and Field Championships this past summer in Langley.
The previous record was held by a team from Australia in a time of 9:29.53. Pinckard and his teammates Chris Deighan, David Guss and Greg Athayde ran 9:16.90.
Over the past few years, Pinckard shattered a 19-year-old Canadian record in the 800m at the B.C. Masters Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Bear Creek Park. The former record belonged to renowned B.C. Athletics Hall of Fame Harold Morioka. It was a performance that instantly made Pinckard a podium favourite nearly a year later in Finland where he captured the 800-metre event in the men’s 60-64 age class at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Tampere. He also added a bronze in the 1,500 race.
“Thinking ahead to Langley, I knew that the 4x800m relay was broken by the Australians in March, so I thought if I could put together a team, we had a good chance of beating that time,” Pinckard recalled. “So in conjunction with the meet, I called guys from across Canada that I knew from competing and from the running community and David, Greg and Chris jumped on board.”
He said everyone met the morning before the meet, talked about placing and which legs each runner would run and it came down to then basically running the race.
None of them had run together in a relay before, but that didn’t seem to factor in.
“We have all done this before with different groups, so it’s not uncommon for us, but with the 4x800 you don’t have to be as precise with the baton and the lane changes,” he said. “I don’t know if we even practiced, it was just a matter of who was going first and we did it.
“It certainly is a Canadian record – because we span from Manitoba, Ontario and B.C., so we are all really thrilled. We broke the record by 13 seconds, which is fairly substantial for that distance.”
Back here at home, Pinckard regularly works out with the South Surrey-based Ocean Athletics Track and Field Club.
He plans to rehab and rest some injuries this fall and will begin training in January.
His goal next year is to run in the World Masters Championships in Sweden in July.
-with previous files from Mark Booth
