Who doesn’t love a themed race? This one was the day of the Super Bowl and during registration you could pick your favorite football team which would be the color of your race bib. I saw lots of Pittsburgh race bibs on Super Bowl Sunday and of course, lots of Carolina bibs as well. The race started and finished beside the Bank of America stadium and wandered around Charlotte’s downtown for 4 miles – because there’s 4 downs in a game, so clearly it should be a 4 mile race! 

I was running with one of my soccer friends and she kept me moving! Even though we started off going downhill, there were so many people around that our first mile ended up being our slowest of the day. Throughout the hills, we kept a pretty constant pace, only walking once for water and again near the very top of the last steep hill (hence the 9:24 for mile 3). During the last mile, we had a pretty long uphill, but we powered through that to finish with an 8:45 final mile! I still didn’t finish in a sprint, but I was able to lengthen my stride a bit as we came up to the Touchdown line. It was a hard race and I’m not sure the last time I ran that fast for that long – it’s definitely been a few months. 

After the race, we stuck around for a little while waiting for our other friends to finish the race, grabbed some of the free race grub and cheered on everyone else who was coming through the finish line. I had some knee pain after the race, so I iced it for awhile and headed to watch the finale of our winter indoor women’s soccer league. The championship game was a really good game and ended in an OT thriller! 

While it doesn’t quite fit into the category of holiday races, it was a fun way to start the Super Bowl Sunday. Have you ever done a sports-themed running event?