heidikins.com

Let’s have a little bit of a break, shall we?  Perhaps take a page from the Book of Perspective.  I am running my first Half-Marathon on April 19, less than two weeks from today.  As of Saturday, this was the score, in miles:

• Half-Marathon: 13.1
• heidikins: 10 and ridiculously sore.

And then things got worse.  Current Score:

• Half-Marathon: 13.1
• heidikins: 10 and missing one toe-nail from her right foot…blast!

Really, if you just look at the numbers it seems pretty clear; this race is going to kick my butt!  I spent probably an hour last night carefully cutting out more than half of the nail from my big toe; which is now all raw and ouchie and generally quite scary looking.  I will not be posting pictures because, um hello, that’s nasty.  No one wants to see that.  I don’t want to see that.  I don’t even really want to think about it.  Unfortunately, every time I take a step I am painfully reminded that I am missing something from my foot.  It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would; and I will probably still complete my scheduled 10-mile run tonight; but the idea of having an ugly right foot all through open-toe sandal season really isn’t helping matters.  At all.

I am the type of person who always has her toe-nails painted; bright red, burnt orange, pearly pink.  If I am without polish I kind of feel like I’m naked.  Correction: I would feel more dressed in toe-nail polish and a smile than a 10′x10′ drop-cloth and no polish.  That’s just the kind of person I am; always polished, well, at least my toes are always polished.  After my self-inflicted toe surgery from yesterday I decided that taking my toe-nail polish off would make the missing toe-nail less noticeable.  I am wearing open-toe shoes today to give the poor thing a chance to breathe and not be squooshed, and every time I look down at my feet I have a moment of terror akin to the junior high school nightmare of showing up to school in your underwear.  I feel naked. 

I feel naked and I’m missing half of my toe-nail. 

And it’s snowy.  (Hello?  April?  Are you there?)

And I’m wearing open-toe shoes. 

I am missing half of my toe-nail with the remaining nine-and-a-half nails sans polish, i.e. naked.

Ergo, I am naked. 

May I remind you it’s snowing.  Naked + Snow = Bad combination. 

Back to that Perspective thing; I am toast.  Naked toast, no less.  Naked toast that will be running a half-marathon in less than two weeks minus one-half of a toe-nail.  I am suddenly more terrified than I have ever been about this race.  At this point I have been training too hard to quit, and the idea of being sidelined by a pithy half-toe-nail seems ridiculous.  So, I am shaking my fist at the Half-Marathon Gods, wrapping my damaged toe in something soft, tying on my shoes and going on a ten-mile run tonight. 

Defiance?  Yes. 

Crazy?  Probably. 

Am I going to do it anyway?  Absolutely.  Stay tuned for results.

[Editor's Note:  I am well aware that the only reason for this post is to keep myself in the running for this race, pun intended.  Somehow announcing to friends and strangers that I will be doing something despite any and all odds makes me more likely to actually complete the damn thing.  So, here I am announcing: I will finish this race.]