By the time we checked into our hotel we both had rather upset stomachs. It started on the BC Ferries. I don't know what it was that we ate, or where we ate it, but we were pretty sick all afternoon. It was a bad scene. It was textbook: getting food poisoning before a huge athletic event. We were both trying to be positive about it, but inwardly I was thinking "there's no fucking way I'm running a marathon feeling like I do currently". I mean, having to use the bathroom a lot is trying at the best of times, let alone having to use a portapottie along the route. And what if you're between portapottie stations? Eeeyuck.
We went out for our light run that afternoon and Michael was like, "Yep. We need to head back 
like now". Not a good sign.
like now". Not a good sign.We went for dinner and it wasn't as nutritious as it could've been and Michael was freezing because before we left he had had a cold bath. And it was really cold outside. And we were seated next to a drafty window. So he was a prime candidate for hypothermia. I mean, we were doing everything wrong. It was awesome. I saw some people sitting in the pub across the way and I thought, "I just want to go out and party tonight and forget this whole running business, because we're falling apart and we haven't even gotten to the start line yet".
Back to the hotel. Crap sleep. Upon waking it appeared we had both gotten over our upset stomachs. We took our time getting ready, eating bagels, drinking juice, doing some stretching, trying not to panic too much. Then we made our way to the start which was like a four minute walk from our hotel room.
The weather was perfect. It had been cold the day before and I put on a garbage shirt over top of my existing one, thinking I would shed it after a few kilometres, but I ditched it before we even started it. We met up with four other people from our clinic. They're the people that Michael runs with because they are freaking fast. They're always nice to me, but I think secretly they whisper "Hey, ditch the straggler" to Michael behind my back. Everyone was pretty antsy.
My strategy had originally been to go out with a 3:30 pace bunny and stick with them as long as I could, but when I walked past the Running Room in Victoria the day before I popped in to ask them if there were going to be pace bunnies at all and they said only one: a four hour bunny. Speaking of pacing, when I trained for my first marathon with the Running Room everything was in kilometres. It took me some time to adjust to the clinic that I'm with now: they list everything in miles. Anyways, in addition to the reams of useless knowledge that clutters my head, I know my per kilometre and per mile race pace. We had discovered that they had marked the course in kilometres, not miles, which was okay for me. I asked Michael if he knew what his kilometre race pace was and he didn't know. I thought that somewhere along the line he would've worked it out - but he didn't! I was a bit dumbfounded when he admitted that just before we started the race. I mean, shit, I need to know where am I am the course to know how much time I have to pop in to coffee shops for lattes and whatnot (I'm the world's laziest runner, I swear to god).
I did see a 3:20 pace bunny, but I thought that trying to follow him would be too ambitious and he would wear me out pretty quickly, so I thought I would try and pace myself. I went out too fast in the Vancouver marathon and I endeavored not to do the same this time around.
At 8:25 the wheelchair athletes went out. The crowd surged forward. I set my watch to zero, put my earbuds in, tried to calm my racing heart, wished Michael good luck and kissed him in front of his running buddies which always makes him squirm and listened to the countdown.
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