You wanna go toe to toe with me?

My one year anniversary of becoming a runner is fast approaching and it's hard to believe that in such a short amount of time, so much has happened. I've been in two races and will do my third race on my anniversary date. I've lost a great deal of weight and I am a pound or two shy of my goal. My confidence has gone through the roof and I'm more social and outgoing. My eating habits have gotten much better and I have even become a better cook. So much to be thankful for running changing my life in so many good ways. But there is one thing that running has brought that is not so positive and I didn't think would happen this early on in my running career. Loss of toenails.

When I started running I heard about this phenomenon of losing toenails. Even when I was two months into fully committing to running, I had a physical with my doctor and when I told her I was training for a half marathon she asked me, "Have you lost any toenails yet?" Really! This early? She said it wouldn't be a big deal if they started going and told me a story about a guy who after constantly losing his toenails when they grew back, asked his doctor to have them permanently removed. What!? Not that I'm partial to my toenails but I wouldn't make the decision to have them removed.

For 18 years of my life I was a dancer. I did everything from ballet to hip hop day in and day out. By the time I was 13 I started dancing on pointe so I am no stranger to my feet taking a beating. Ahhh.... I remember the days of taping my toes and wrapping them in lamb's wool in my pointe shoes. Getting blisters, popping them and having the skin hang off and then my toes would bleed because there was never enough time for the popped blister to heal. I did everything to try and take care of my feet because they were my asset. But I never had to deal with blisters UNDER my toenails. And one would think that with all the craziness I had to endure in ballet that I would be able to handle losing a couple of toenails, but no.

During the summer I started noticing that I would get blisters under my nails and some of them I could pop but mostly I couldn't. When it came time to cutting my nails down I started noticing that slowly but surely the nail was getting shorter and shorter. There was less nail bed with each snip of the clipper. I was always under the impression that the nail would just pop off, literally! Mentally I was more prepared for the quick death of my nails. I kind of envisioned that they would just click off like Lee press on nails and all at once. I never thought that I would have to endure a slow and agonizing death of each and every toenail.

I'm not heartbroken that I will no longer be able to paint my nails and I still plan on wearing sandals. Yes everyone else's eyes will have to deal with my all too literally naked toes. But my confidence in my unique feet doesn't take away from the small grieving process that I am going through. What will be more interesting is what I will do when only four nails remain. At the moment six are ready to go but four seem to want to hold out for the long haul. I guess once I come to grips with the loss of my nails I can just have the other four removed like my doctor said. Then I will show all ten naked toes with pride.