The night before the last day of the run, we felt a sense of relief and huge accomplishment. As you may have read from the end of my previous post, only a short 16km separated us from our destination-Mile 0, Victoria. We knew that we would be wrapping up the run around 12:00pm on June 25th, so we invited a few friends, sponsors and members of the press.
The morning of the run, I was up at around 6:30am and had a brief phone interview with Robin & Brian of 107.3 Kool FM. They host Kool Mornings and they have done a few other interviews with me during the course of the run. Later that morning, I heard my interview on the radio which made me even more excited to be finishing the run.
Then, at around 8:20am, I had another radio interview, with Brad Russell of The Port 1240. The Port 1240 and their sister stations along the Island also followed and updated their listeners about Run for Their Lives 2013.
At around 10:00am Ian and I met up with my running partner Kara, who also joined us for the very last leg. All the tough hills were behind us and I was so thrilled to be finishing this run uninjured.
Mike Wignall, the owner of Westbrook Consulting (one of our sponsors) took the following two photos. Thank you for forwarding those to us!!
As Kara, Ian and I made our way towards Victoria on the very last leg, traffic became pretty busy. We knew we would be going on the sidewalks as soon as we got into town.
As Kara and I ran alongside the road, Erin from CTV News caught up with us to get footage of what was remaining of the nearly 500km journey to raise hope, awareness and funds for three well-deserving charities . I was very thrilled to be able to connect with Erin! She is a runner too and I was very happy to meet her. 🙂
Above: Photo by IMS FotoGrafix (Ian). Kara, me and Erin from CTV.
When we got into town, Ian drove at normal driving speed and therefore he was able to get to Mile 0 before we did. Kara and I continued to run on the sidewalks along Douglas Street with Erin and the cameraman occasionally stopping to get shots of us approaching the finish line. Erin also interviewed me about the run right at the finish.
As Kara and I picked up the pace and went towards the Mile 0 monument, Ian was already comfortably parked, out of the RV and standing near the monument with his wife, Michelle. There were a few other people waiting for us as well, including representatives from the charities and some friends. Maggie from Blue Baby Tax Prep arrived with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. I was so happy to see her!
Above: Shaking hands with the Recreation Integration Victoria group. Photo by IMS FotoGrafix.
I was thrilled to see Don Descoteau and Don Denton from Victoria News (Black Press) at the finish line. I haven’t seen Don Descoteau since one of the Black Press Scholarship dinners from a long time ago and it was fantastic to get a chance to catch up.
As we completed the run, I suddenly got a second wind in addition to the sense of accomplishment. All of a sudden, I felt as if though I didn’t just run 16km-my body felt more like I only ran 3km.
Finishing the run was an AMAZING MOMENT!
Official “Thank You” post will be coming out soon. 🙂