My Journey With Health And Fitness – You Know You Are A Runner When…

Yesterday I had my brother at a downtown hospital by 6:00am. We knew he would be there for 6-8 hours so I decided to go for a 10k walk along the Seawall through Stanley Park. I walked down to English Bay to the Seawall and turned westward only to immediately slam on my brakes and stop. There along the Seawall was a gaggle of geese. Not a group of 10-12 that I normally deal with on the White Rock promenade but literally dozens of geese. I decided there was no way I was walking through that gaggle so I turned eastward and actually enjoyed my walk along the bay. While I did encounter a few geese, the best part was meeting a 7 week old golden retriever who was more than will to make friends. Ultimately those 10k certainly helped kill some time.

A few days before I did the 1/2 marathon a card was dropped in my mailbox. It was from a friend who is also a runner and the title was You Know You Are A Runner When. There were all sorts of items on the list such as you rotate your running shoes more often than your tires, running less than an hour seems pointless, you’ve run more of you local roads than you’ve driven, etc. I had to laugh because so many of these statements are now true for me and quite frankly it really was awesome that the friend had written words of support for me.

One of the interesting statements was you have at least one black toenail. I actually have two black toenails though one of which was caused by dropping a heavy jar on my big toe, that one is almost healed. However, my other big toe is completely black. I have done some research on this and it really isn’t that much of a cause for alarm, it is simply known as runner’s toenail.

So what causes this? It is not that difficult to understand that when you run you toes (especially the big toes) get tossed and bashed around in you shoes. This can be amplified by the fact that sometimes your toes will actually swell when you are running or doing long walks (mine do). When this happens the vessels under the nail break and bleed causing what is basically a big bruise under the nail turning it black. This can also lead to infection and loss of the toenail but it seems to overall be relatively harmless (I am using an anti-fungal to stave off an infection).

Can you do anything to prevent this? Here are some of the recommendations especially for novice runners,

1. Buy proper fitting shoes
2. Keep your toenails short
3. Work on your technique
4. Tie your shoes
5. Slowly increase your mileage
6. Wear cushioning socks

Now these are all very good recommendations but to be honest I already do all of these things. However, it is noted that runner’s toenail is more prevalent in people who run more than 3k at a time and run more than 3 times per week. Yep, that would be me. I’ve decided to do just wear my black toenail as a badge of honor noting that it shows just how hard I have worked at all of this.