Schwag Winner and Germantown Half Report

First thing first, the winner of the Schwagbox giveaway is...

Matthew Smith!

Matt also has a blog called Go Smitty GO!  Check it out! And thanks to everyone that entered and a special thanks to Schwagbox.com for participating in the giveaway! Congrats Matt!

Germantown Race Report:

This race was a mystery going in. As you know, my main focus has been the Olympic triathlon I have in May, so a half marathon was not my sole focus. My longest training run had only been 9 miles going in, so I was really unsure as to how the race would go. I knew that I was going to be good for 8 or 9 miles, but after that, who knew?? My initial plan was to run it hard and see how long I could hold on. I soon realized that plan was stupid, I mean that has NEVER worked for me in the past, so why would it work now right? So in came Plan B.

One of my buddies was going to run the half also, so why we were talking, I kind of latched on to his plan. He was going to pace the run the first half and try to negative split the race. This sounded like a great idea and something totally different from my normal race plan. And it worked! We actually negative split the half marathon and I finished in 2:03.

Here were my splits:
1: 9:31
2: 9:47 (Uphill)
3: 9:46
4: 9:25
5. 9:35
6: 9:35
7: 9:28
8: 9:18
9: 9:13
10: 9:21
11: 9:18
12: 8:44
13:8:45

I really was surprised that I had anything left in the tank at the end of the race, but I felt strong. I was able to to turn it up a notch and finish really strong. I actually felt so good that I believe I could have gone sub 2! All in all, I was very happy with this race, I was scared I was under trained for it and would tank at about mile 10, but instead, I was ready to go and felt strong!