Let's Talk About Toenails

I was going to start this post with a picture of a gnarly toenail or something, but when I googled to find an image, I about lost my lunch. So we'll just go with this.

I have now considered myself to be a runner for about 5 years. In that time, I have never lost a toenail, knock on wood. I attribute that to the fact that my best friend and fellow Sweat Sister, Ami, took me to a local running store for my first pair of legitimate running shoes, and right from the get-go, I was wearing shoes that fit me properly. As a side note, if you haven't done that before, I highly recommend it. I'm sure I'll come back to shoes in a later post as well. 

Fast forward to this past Sunday when I was running down Big Cottonwood Canyon and I had a weird pain in a couple of my toes on my left foot starting around mile 6. I chalked it up to running on the sloping shoulder of the canyon road, and tried to relax and run closer to the white line when I could. I finished out the full 10 miles, and went home to stretch and shower. As I was getting in the shower, I peeled off my sock and saw blood. Crap. Not a lot, but enough to make me wonder what had happened. Apparently, I have been neglecting toenail maintenance in the last week or so, because I had one toenail that was just a smidgen too long and a little pointy on the corner, and had been piercing a small hole in the toe next to it during my entire run. Swell. To update you on the status of my injured toe, it's already healed and no longer causing me pain, but I immediately sat down and lopped off all my toenails right then and there. 

I have always kept my toenails pretty short for several reasons, but this just adds one more to the list. Not only do I not want them bashing into the front of my running shoes, or to be the weird lady with the freakishly long toenails, but I don't need them to slice open their neighboring piggies either. So the moral of this story is to keep your toenails a reasonable length, and make sure you don't have any sharp corners on them either. Happy running!