Yes, that's us at the finish line! There's plenty to say about it, but I'm on vacation.

Picture me on the beach with my mac laptop, doing a little leisure writing in the hammock, reflecting on the events of the previous few days, pausing only to tip the boy with the towel over his arm, tray of Mai Tais in hand. The scent of my hand-made plumeria lei wafts upward, inspiring me with each word I type. This is some of the best work I've ever done! And the children playing in the warm ocean waves crashing gently on the beach, my wife with her eyes closed, smiling to herself during a nap on the grass...

I ask you to picture it this way, as the reality is somewhat less glamorous. We all have runny noses and lidocaine patches on our legs. The rain hasn't stopped for more than a few minutes, pouring down and drowning out the hacking cough that erupts out of the Little Ditchman at random intervals. Some of us are fighting the urge to vomit, but there's enough diarrhea to go around as a distraction. Haven't had a wink of sleep in a week, it seems. The blisters on our feet from the waterlogged running shoes are pretty nasty, but the pain from them is overshadowed by the pain from the muscles and joints. You runners know the feeling.

There's more to say, of course, but I'd like to heal first, and it's a little tricky using a PC for the blog for the first time (it's my brother-in-law's.)

Still, we are pretty proud of ourselves, and it was another terrific accomplishment. My time was 4:21, which is what I ran last time I ran a marathon in the driving rain. Of note: the Honolulu Marathon as a whole wasn't nearly as well organized as the reunion area of the 2006 Marine Corp Marathon, but at least they had English subtitles and translators for the hundred or so Americans who ran the race. I was the tallest one there! Japanese heads in front of and behind me as far as the eye could see...