Woke up early on 10/9 to catch the Victoria Clipper ride to Victoria, BC… KarenC and I were on the same ferry… Jeff, Anne, Kendall and Kate were on the later ferry, and Paul was on the earlier one… nice ride… went straight to the Marathon Expo, picked up our registration info, and then explored town… since town is so small, that didn’t take long 🙂 We ended up catching an early dinner with Paul, and then packed in early… i had been feeling tired/sick all week, so i really wanted to get a full night’s sleep to make the run even possible tomorrow… I was successful, and woke on 10/10 feeling actually pretty good! The Half Marathon was gorgeous… 8am start… first few miles thru town, then lots of the later miles along the ocean/water… I was feeling great thru ~mile#7-8… then started feeling tired… then started feeling a lot of pain… our goal was to run under 1 hour 50 minutes… so i tracked that pace as good as I could… we ended up taking our pace comfortably under the 50 spot… then the last 3+ miles were total pain for me… the kind of pain that makes you grimace and think seriously about walking… i did that… i thought that i might have to walk… that i could still beat the 50 goal… but i kept on going… thankfully Jeff was right next to me (KarenC took off and finished ~90 seconds ahead of us)… at one point Jeff said “when we get close to the finish we can kick it in”… my response “i’m in a lot of pain”… i think he understood… jeff, thanks for sticking with me and helping me finish so strong… in the end, jeff and i finished in 1 hour, 46 minutes, 42 seconds… 8:08/mile pace… amazing! maybe the best run i’ve ever had… in that i (a) beat my goal and (b) beat my desire to walk… i ended up walking around in a daze afterward for quite awhile… felt great to get home later that night 🙂