Super Bowl Party (and a Super Bowl Party Fueled Long Run)

We hosted a wild party on Sunday! We had dozens of people over for a crazy night!

Just kidding. It's a global pandemic.

The boys heard about what a Super Bowl party usually looks like, and they asked if we could have one ourselves. So we did. Here's what I posted on Instagram Sunday night:

The boys wanted a true Super Bowl party, so I spent the afternoon making lots of goodies! The bacon-wrapped weenies were the biggest hit. ❤️🇺🇸🏈

The bacon-wrapped weenies. (The sprinkling of brown sugar before baking is the kicker!)


Some rosemay garlic shrimp for my wife.

No exaggeration: I spent 4 hours straight in the kitchen before the game! (And then about another hour cleaning up later.) A bit of that was some meal prep for my wife for the week though.

So look at that spread. Here's what we had:

CRACKERS/CHIPS:
- Wheat Thins
- Club crackers
- Pita chips
- Bite-sized tortillas
- Rosemary "fancy" crackers
- Cool Ranch Doritos

FRUITS/VEGGIES:
- Grapes
- Blueberries
- Cantaloupe
- Cucumbers
- Bell pepper
- Kalamata olives
- Apples (thinly sliced for cheese and crackers)

CHEESE:
- Asiago
- A semi-soft garden veggie with basil
- Smoked gouda

DIPS:
- Homemade dill dip
- Guacamole

EXTRA RICH GOODIES:
- Seasoned French Fries
- Mini corn dog bites
- Summer sausage
- Bacon-wrapped little weenies
- Rosemary garlic shrimp

I also had prosciutto that I forgot to get out. (I ate it later and remembered that I didn't care for prosciutto.) And some "good" deli ham to slice up for meat and cheese and crackers.

We ended the night with a tube of cinnamon rolls. Yep, really.

The boys ate so much that they were basically in a food coma by the time the half-time show rolled around:

And the next day, Charlie woke up early having to pee badly (and never went back to bed), and Henry felt dizzy at school from dehydration. It's like they had their first hangovers!

So after all of that, I was planning on my weekly long run the next morning. "This can only end well," right? I was ready for it to suck, and I even told myself that I could take it a bit easy this week for my long run.

But I actually felt fine, so I pushed it a bit MORE on my long run instead!

It snowed a little, and it was cold - this was dropping the boys off at school.
You KNOW I love to "see what you're made of" in those cold runs, but I hit the treadmill.

You've heard me talk about doing my long runs with 5-6 miles "at pace" in the middle. And how that on the treadmill I can keep speeding up through those: like in this workout last year where I started at 8.7 mph and bumped it up 0.1 mph every half mile to hit 9.8 mph for the last half mile. (Lately I've been starting at 8.9 and getting up to 10.0 mph.)

Well, on this "Super Bowl Party"-fueled long run on Monday, I started my hard miles at 9.4 mph and held it there for 2 miles. Then up to 9.5 for another mile. I worked my way up more "randomly," and I ended up hitting those faster "pace" miles in the middle faster than normal because of that: I did those hard 6 miles in 37:25 (6:14/mile pace). Compare that to 2.5 weeks ago: then I did the descend from 8.9 to 10.0 mph, and that was 6 miles in 38:09 (6:22/mile pace).

So maybe I'll be packing bacon-wrapped little weenies in my bike bag during my bigger training days...