“Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.”
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
VICKY: This morning, I read Dana’s blog and I felt relieved that another woman runner had had a toenail injury such as mine. I felt like now, I could go public with my story.
GRANT: Oh my gawd woman, you’re obsessed with this toenail injury.
VICKY: Grant, this is serious. Our readers need to know that it can happen to them too. They need to know that simple little changes such as wearing the right sock, tying up your shoes a little tighter or buying shoes with more room for your toes can save their toenails.
GRANT: Vicky, your nail is likely going to fall off. Accept it and move on.
VICKY: It’s easy for men to say that because you don’t spend hundreds of dollars getting your feet pedicured so they look pretty throughout the year. You don’t understand. Women love their toenails. I love my toenails and I want to keep them. I’m not hardcore like Marshall Ulrich.
GRANT: You’re right, I had forgotten that in Born to Run the author talks about how some people are such hardcore ultrarunners that they have their toenails surgically removed for good.
VICKY: That is exactly what Marshall did. According to the author, Marshall is : “an affable dog food tycoon who perked up his times by having his toenails surgically removed.” I also found this really interesting article from the NY Times about ultrarunners getting their toenails surgically removed and they talk about Marshall and Born to Run. It’s actually quite interesting even though I would never do it.
GRANT: By the way, holy six degrees of separation! Did you know Marshall Ulrich is currently running the Sahara desert with Ray Zahab and the i2P team in Tunisia?
VICKY: Yes and he’s actually got a pretty cool blog set up to talk about the experience!
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I think almost every one of my toenails ended up some degree of pink/purple at some point lsat year (some fell off although thankfully my big on didn’t – it’s finally back to normal almost a year later!). I went up a half shoe size and haven’t had any issues yet.
Ran 12 miles tonite so I am good to go for my first half this year in a couple of weeks. Seems like a tiny way toward my first ultra though?!! I’ll get there – maybe not this year but eventually!
I am going to sign up for a trail series this year though so I ‘m taking the steps to get there!
I’m currently reading Thrive (by Brendan Brazier – Ironman Triathlete and Formulator of Vega) and eating a vegetarian gluten-free diet (due more for intolerance and digestive issues reasons than performance although I am very interested in the performance aspect). I think it is having a positive impact on my performance and general energy level. I haven’t introduced a fully hard core raw diet yet, but I’m going to give it a whirl!
The vegan for performance debate is an interesting one – Thrive makes a really good case for it – especially for recovery which I have definately noticed as an almost non-event (or maybe I’m just not pushing myself hard enough?!).
Interesting stuff!