My attempt was successful (barely). For all practical purposes, we have the same time, but I came in at 9h05m36s, about 6 min faster. The garmin link above will still be active for a while, but the run is also now up on Strava.
www.strava.com/activities/1261611829/overview
Turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. I thought I might come in around 8h30m, but it wasn't happening. Cheers to Ian, I'm sure I would have been 15-20 min slower without the knowledge of his time, which allowed me to dig deep for the last few miles.
As for style, I will note that I did stop at the available water spigots along the route (Steel Creek around mi 13, and Kyles Landing around mi 21). They are both slightly out of the way, so may add just a bit of time. They also shut down during winter, so wouldn't have been available during Ian's previous runs. Sounds like he just drank the creek water. Not excited about drinking creek water straight in that area, I took some purification tablets as a backup, in case spigots were already off or I ran out of water in between. Didn't end up needing the tablets. Good thing, there was hardly any water in the creeks.