After a 5 hour drive from Seattle Saturday afternoon, my little groin injury had completely stiffened up, and sleeping on Donnie's floor for a night didn't help much. I was in some pain during our warm up on a Spokane side street, and wasn't really sure how things would go. Add in the warmest starting time temperature in a decade and forecast finish time around 80, I knew it would be a tougher race than usual. I decided to take it out at a good pace and see how my leg felt, rather than fold early. Surprisingly, once I got going my leg didn't give me much pain. I jumped on a grassy median to move around the crowd, missed the first mile marker (as I almost always do), zoomed down the first hill and hit the two-mile marker in 11:33. Mile three levels out and I tried to back off a bit, and hit 6:19. But then I started to fade, and by mile 4 (6:17) I knew I didn't quite have it this time, probably had started to quickly and by then we were exposed in the sun. A 6:38 up Doomsday meant I wasn't going to PR, and I admittedly packed it in a bit and just cruised the last 2.5 at 6:34, 6:22 and 2:36. The only consolation is that all times seemed slow this year, which was clearly the result of the heat. We just aren't used to it this early! On the cool down with Mike my groin pain began again, it was screaming at me after I had sat down for 15 minutes. So I've been a little ginger since then, trying to slowly take care of it. | 