Saturday, February 11, 2012

Super Bowl 4 Miler


I love Super Bowl! Combining Super Bowl with a morning race is a serious win for me. When I heard about the Super Bowl four mile race held yearly just a couple miles from my house I was pretty stoked. I talked Daddio into letting me veer off our weekly training plan, so we could run it. I’m sure glad I did! The course was great, it was a beautiful morning and the weather was perfect.

Since the race was so close to home and we were sacrificing a long run for it, we decided to do an easy jog to the race and an easy jog home, which would put us just over 7 miles for the day. Not the distance I was hoping for, but I had to also factor in the intensity of race pace.

When we got to the park and went through registration, we received our event t-shirt, which made us look at each other for a moment. What were we going to do with them? They were cotton, so they would be too heavy to wear over what we currently had on and I was rocking my Cowboy’s jersey and really didn’t want to cover that up, so we ended up placing them in a tree of all places (they were still there when we got back yay).

The race took us on a nice big four mile loop that was part street and part trail. The first three fourths of the race wound through quiet neighborhoods and the end took us through Lake Los Carneros Park, bringing us right up next to the lake. It was all very well planned and executed. The neighborhoods were quiet, not many cheer crowds or spectators and the group of runners numbered under four hundred, so we got pretty well spread out after the first mile. It made for a peaceful low key race.

Look at Romo run

Since we were running it just for fun, we kept things mellow. We would pick someone out ahead of us, usually someone that stood out for some reason or someone who looked like they were struggling and make it our goal to catch up or pass them. Our first victims were two girls in matching outfits, way too hard to resist. Later it was a guy in a blue shirt from the local gym that proclaimed he was a trainer, and then it was a mother and son and so on and so on.

We both felt good and we were having a good time. Within the last half mile, we set our sights on a little girl who had to be less than eight years old, running with her dad and we slowly started gaining on her. We passed her on the last hill, when the father told her the magic words “The finish line is just around the corner”, she took off like a shot. I picked up the pace too, but she left us in the dust.


We finished strong, all smiles and even enjoyed a hotdog at the finish line to commemorate the event. I gave a shout out to another girl in a Cowboys jersey and we mingled for a little while, before jogging home. It was a morning to remember.

Daddio enjoying after race fruit and hotdog!
Our finish time was 36:51, an automatic PR being my first four mile race. I’m looking forward to beating my 5k PR in just a few weeks.

Happy running!

1 comment:

  1. I have run a 4 mile race once before, too, and it was held really close to my house and we even ran down my street. Not everyone can say they have run a race with their dad. Sounds like a fun race!

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