Long runs and new shoes and creepy bears, oh my!

I finally found a USB cord so I could upload my photos from my iPod to my laptop, so I've been failing at blogging lately. Here's a brief round up of what I've been up to:

1.  Long runs and new shoes

I forgot how much I missed my early Saturday long runs.  As much as I hate getting up early on one of my days off, I love getting to see the city before everyone else (besides all the other crazies out doing the same thing).  My friend Martha is training for the Marine Corp Marathon, and she is adding miles to the Team 13 training runs, so the last 2 weekends a few of us joined and made the 6 and 7 mile runs into 10 and 11 milers.  These runs have been great, it's been cool and not humid that early in the morning so I can actually breathe.  For the 11 mile run I broke down and bought new shoes the day before since I pretty much wore my Ravennas down to the foam and they were causing me some serious calf pain (note for new runners, don't be too cheap with shoes, they make a huge difference).  It was nice running without pain and I'm sure everyone with me was glad that I wasn't whining! My new shoes are Mizuno Wave Inspire 7s.  So far so good!

I prefer eating Jelly Belly Sport beans to eat during long runs, but since they are available aaaaalll the way the way across town I've been trying various kinds of gummy stuff.  I found you get strange looks at Thornton's when you are buying Swedish Fish at 5:30 in the morning.

Creepy Bears and Wine Monkeys (if I had a band, this would be the name)

Driving home from the run on Saturday I came across this:

That would be a polar bear in a Sulley costume pointing the way to a yard sale in my neighborhood.  Creepy, yet effective.  I probably wouldn't have noticed the yard sale sign otherwise, but seriously...


And then there was this...

Words can't describe the awesomeness.

Random question of the day:
Does anyone else find Swedish Fish to be kind of creepy and disturbing?  Like fish that got run over.