Ewww Gross!!

Many times I have come across articles & posts about runner's feet - most of them accompanied by nightmarish pictures of unsightly toenails and jammed up toes. Not pretty. (Go on! Just google runners feet and see - I dare you!). Having never experienced any such issues with my feet, I have never had much sympathy for the suffering owners of the feet in the pictures - that is until now!

The problem (not really a big one) actually began several weeks ago post my D2D night run. If you recall, that was a particularly cumbersome run - it was also my longest. After the run, I felt an unprecedented soreness in my toes. I found it strange at the time but didn't really give much thought to when after the usual resting and icing, the soreness went away. A few weeks later I noticed that the toenail on the second toe on my left foot had stopped growing. It was grey and dull while the others looked pink and normal. On closer examination I realized that the nail was not really attached to the toe any longer. Just a bit of it clung onto the skin at the base but the rest of it could be lifted right off and clipped away if I liked. This discovery came about a week before DRHM and I was afraid that if I clipped it or removed the whole thing away, it might hurt or worse bleed and prevent me from running the HM. So I left it.

Its finally been trimmed down now and theres a little stub of a toe nail that remains. I'm not sure if it will ever grow back. I've also noticed that three of the toenails on the right foot are also dead. Gosh! I guess this means no more sandals for a while!

The down side to running.