"Living underground/ eating from a can..."

These are my party feet. They were feeling pretty tired yesterday after 18 miles on the Slippery Elm Trail, but not too tired to dance for approximately four hours straight at the Hazard party later that evening (though shoeless). No one throws a party like Phil, and it's hard to stop dancing when Paul is spinning from his massive collection of vinyl. I told Phil as we were leaving (a little before 4 this morning) that his were the parties by which all others will be judged. Believe.

The run was okay; not fantastic, but not too bad considering its ridiculous length and the gray skies. There were a number of firsts, in addition to that particular length on this trail:

1. New shoes! Check out my hot flame- and lightning -colored Asics. They're essentially my old shoes, but with slightly more support (and approximately 600 less miles). They're shiny.

2. New top. I picked up a cropped racer-back tank at the running store where I got my shoes. Since I applied my own sunscreen, I now have thin, uneven strips of sunburn where I didn't quite reach to the edges of the top. Since it's short, I had to remember to keep my tummy in; my abs got more of a workout than they'd bargained for.

3. Hooted at by rednecks in a truck as I was hunting for my hidden water bottle (the search never did turn it up; it was apparently either stolen or raptured). Possibly due to the aforementioned top.

4. Told by a pot-bellied cyclist eating a sandwich on a bench at the Rudolph station, as I slowed to a walk to approach the port-a-potty 12 miles into the run, that I should smile when I ran.

It was not my first time fueling using Sport Beans, which are Jelly Belly's venture into the world of performance food, and which I tried for the first time, despite their general strangeness, when I couldn't find energy gels at Meijer. Though I'm a Jelly Belly fan, I was dubious of their ability in the performance arena, but did pick up a few bags after the label convinced me that they were directly comparable to gels I'd used before on carbs, calories, and electrolytes. I was delighted to find them not only tasty (tangier than their sickly-sweet gel counterparts and fun to chew) and effective, but even a welcome diversion.

That was two weeks ago, and as I was running my 16, I schemed how I could get Sport Beans to sponsor me. I figured I was the clear answer to promoting this quirky, little-known product: a marathon runner but a normal person, a grad student ("Sport Beans are great for study marathons, too!"), a congenital smiler, and cheap. Heck, I have quirky (and Sport Beans!) written all over me. Add to those reasons the fact that I have a handy, well-established blog for promoting the cause and the fact that I could really use some new workout clothes, and I figure I'm a shoo-in. Do you hear me, Sport Beans? You need someone to get the word out about you at races, and now I have shoes that would match a little orange Sport Beans jersey really well.

(Just don't tell them I'll probably give up running--at least for a little while--after this marathon; I miss being satisfied with 7.5 hours of sleep a night, eating whatever I feel like, and not having my knees pop and crack all the time. I will say, however, that training has done wonders for my dancing endurance.)