A stitch in time

...No not another woeful runner's blog entry talking about blackened toenails. This is more about my usual grumble of not looking after them sufficiently and how their need for a little TLC.

 

Let's look back over the past month

1. GUCR
2. Several trail runs
3. South Downs Way

Which comes to just under 200 miles, 2 of those runs totalling 128 miles. The deep heel blisters from the GUCR took about 3 weeks to really dry out and start to crack requiring some skin cream which has been fine for a few dry runs but the South Downs put pay to that when another blood blister appeared under the weakened skin. All these issues I can deal with but yesterday's run on the very wet and very muddy paths put pay to this for when I arrived home, bathed and my feet dried out found that enough was enough and great swathes of dried heel skin was peeling off.

Time for action

A complete work out on my feet, armed with emery boards, scissors and the skin cream mentioned above I went to work. Nails clipped I can report the following:

	Big	Index	Middle	Fourth	Little
Left	D/X	X			D
Right	DX	X		D	D

Damaged	D
Missing	X

I addition the hardened skin has been softened up and I have just been in time to prevent (I hope) any heel cracking and can be assured that there are no infected areas...not a pretty sight.