Things I keep meaning to share...

... but I kept forgetting to charge up my camera batteries. Oops! However, on Sunday I was (optimistically!) putting away the cold-weather clothes, and it was a "do it now" kind of thing. So, here we have it, the 66-Mile Club t-shirt that I worked for throughout 2008:

I admit it is not as cool as the 2007 shirt, which was blue with white lettering and had "66 Mile Club" on the sleeve, but this one is at least somewhat better, because it belongs to me! :) I do love the Route 66 logo.

And here is the Austin finisher shirt:

I love the runner in the middle. Also, I feel like I add several degrees of cool to myself when I put this shirt on. (Most of my friends feel that I add several degress of crazy. Close enough.) You may notice that natural-coloured seems to be in vogue with running people this year. Austin, in particular, was anxious for us to notice just how eco-friendly they are, so most of their stuff was natural-coloured with green on it. Meh.

Speaking of Austin and green things:

The finisher's medal! The ribbon is really pretty, I think, and the green buildings on the medal are coloured plastic or something; anyway, when you hold it up to the light, the light shines right through. Chad hadn't noticed this until he saw me holding his up a couple of days ago.

I had some trouble getting a pic of the medal lying on the bed, so this is what I did when I finally got annoyed:
Try not to notice the crow's feet. (I'm much too young for that kind of wrinkles.)

And some more new stuff... the new short-sleeved running shirt (in my favourite colour) :

The new long-sleeved running shirt (in my sister's favourite colour) :

And, the new running shoes:
Do not be fooled by the photo; those bits on my shoes that look red are, in fact, pink. Really, really pink. But these were the most comfortable and best-fitting shoes I found in the store, so it's just a bummer that they have so much of my least favourite colour. But, I decided that I couldn't buy running shoes based on the colour; there are more important things to consider in shoes. I'm just hoping that my aversion to pink will make me run faster in an attempt to get away. :)

(Just skip this paragraph if you aren't that interested in running shoes.) These are Mizuno Wave Rider 12s, which is the latest version of the series. They were Editor's Choice by Runner's World magazine, and as such were on my list of shoes to look for when I went to the store. And, as already mentioned, they are super-comfortable and fit beautifully; no sliding around or anything. These are also gender-engineered shoes, meaning that there are significant differences between the men's and women's versions. Good news for women (hey, that's me!), since that means they aren't just a smaller version of men's shoes, but they are designed with a woman's body in mind. #11 in the series were blue (I tried them on, too, but #12 won me over), so I'm hoping that the good people over at Mizuno will see the light when making #13 and go back to blue. Or at least just lose the pink. I'm running my first race in these shoes this weekend; so more news on how they do later.

It was just good luck that I got so much new stuff these past couple of weeks; I had a gift card from work to a local sports store as a prize from our Biggest Loser contest (yay!), and then I won the most recent Bible verse contest (double yay!), so I went and bought waaaay more stuff than I normally would. Plus, the new tops (which are nice wicking shirts, by the way) were on sale. Booyah!