Coquitlam’s Paxton Lin took up running to help him get better at badminton.
Sunday, the Port Moody Secondary School grad served up a fourth-place finish in the Men’s 19U age category at the BMO Vancouver Marathon.
Lin completed the 42.2-km race in 3:18:59.
Lin, who’s won provincial championships on the badminton court, started running the trails at Mundy Park with his mother, Petrina, to improve his fitness and bolster his mental fortitude.
“You have to have the ability to outlast your opponent,” he said about physical and mental endurance required to be successful in badminton. “Running is good for my mind.”
In the fall of 2021, Lin finished second at the high school district cross-country championships and he was ranked sixth in the province in the 3,000 m on the track.
Last spring, he was named top senior male athlete at PMSS and he was awarded the Wayne Norton Memorial Scholarship, named after the former Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame from Port Moody who passed away from ALS in 2018.
Lin ran his first BMO Marathon just last year.
Meanwhile, Coquitlam Cheetahs’ runner Brendan Wong finished sixth overall in his marathon debut at the BMO.
He completed the course in 2:25:40. That was a little more than than eight minutes off the winning pace set by men’s champion Yuki Kawauchi, who finished in a time of 2:17:04.
In total, there were 6,283 participants in the full marathon.
Other local athletes who finished in the top 10 in their age category include:
- Martin Mohlmann, Coquitlam, 2nd in the men’s 45–49 (2:57:12)
- Andrea Foote, Coquitlam, 3rd in the women’s 50–54 (3:24:21)
- Lorelei Sadowski, Port Coquitlam, 4th in the women’s 60–64 (4:02:54)
- Alex Kellner, Port Coquitlam, 7th in the men’s 19U (3:43:19)
