June 2014 – RunningWell

Not to be vain, but for the most part I think running tends to make people better looking. It increases blood flow, giving you better skin, decreases body fat, increases muscle tone and gets you out in the fresh air giving you that “healthy glow” appeal. However, I have noticed one extreme aesthetic downside to all the running I do, and that is the appearance of my feet.

I do not want to turn anyone off of running for fear of getting feet like mine, so I will tell you that it has been a slow and almost imperceptible change over 25 years of running. I used to rather like my feet. I thought they were well proportioned – toes neither too long nor too stubby, nice arches, normal shape. I basically felt confident walking around in bare feet or sandals anywhere. These days however, when I go swimming, I have no problem wearing a bikini in front of strangers but I feel I should keep my feet covered up!

So what do they look like? Basically they have very large callouses along the sides and bottoms (areas that protect them from miles and miles of intense pressure and pounding.) There are a few misshapen toe-nails which have been lost and grown back a few times. Plus the ends of two toes (the longest ones on each foot) are all dead skin and callous – not really sure why this is. Most of the time now I just try to ignore the fact that these appendages are attached to the bottoms of my legs. Generally I cover them with socks and shoes when I can, but as we entered our third or fourth week of sandal season, I realized I could no longer live in denial. I had to do some house-keeping.

So, the other day I took my four-year old daughter (who has encouraged me to stop running so that my feet could get “un-ugly”) to the salon so we could both get pedicures. You see I thought I could bring her along for the cute factor and distract them from the horror they were being asked to fix. I have heard of runners asking them not to remove callouses because they’ve built them up for protection, but I was feeling adventurous and wanted to see an “extreme makeover” so I said nothing and left the challenge in their professional hands.

She had her work cut out for her here

The outcome? They were very professional and acted like I was “normal” while removing pounds of dead skin. My feet became presentable and I felt almost confident walking around in my flip-flops.

You can barely tell which ones are the runner’s feet

Then I went for my first post-pedicure run. It felt…. the same as usual. I think my callouses are so ingrained they would actually have to be surgically removed at this point. They had returned to their pre-pedicure form within one run.

These were petal-soft one week ago

Oh well. I think I can live with this side-effect from running. I’m sure in another 25 years I’ll look back and think that these were baby callouses! Oh dear…

I am lucky to have many good friends who have been with me through different phases in my life, from going to school in a new town, traveling, getting married, having kids, starting and changing careers, etc… Every now and then I start thinking about a friend or relationship in my life, and I trace it back to its origin. Most often, the origin began with running.

I don’t consciously choose friends because they are runners. In fact, many of my friends who became friends through running no longer run, or at least not with me. We get together now for other reasons like play-dates for our kids, book clubs, coffee, dinner. Running is rarely what we talk about, but it’s a background of common knowledge. We basically understand each other.

How I hang out with many of my running friends these days

One of my earliest formed “running friendships” began in grade 9. I was at a track meet waiting for my race and so was a curly-haired girl from a rival school and track-club. We started jumping on the high-jump mats (as one does in preparation for running 1500m) and it was instant friendship. Twenty four years later she is still one of my best friends.

Throughout high school and university I developed different interests and different sets of friends. The ones which have stuck however are mostly the ones which were formed around running. This seems strange to me as there are so many variants to my friends’ personalities and interests apart from having once been (or still being) runners. Some love to party, some are more reserved, some are funny, some are quiet listeners, some are numbers people, some are poetry people, some are parents, some are pet-lovers, some are peace-makers, some love personal drama. And don’t even get me started on the differences in their careers!

So why do I like all these very different and interesting types of people and why do they like me? I have NO IDEA! The only thing I can think of is that we were all once (or still are) runners. Somehow there is something in each other that we all GET.

Luckily I married one of these runner types. We met on the track team at university and used to run together a lot. Every now and then we’ll still go for a run together, but that’s not our main thing anymore. There are many different things that we do together these days, but I like to think it was all built on a foundation of running.

Marrying my best running friend

I hope to continue to make friends in life as I genuinely like people and benefit greatly from their friendship and company. I don’t know which friendships will continue to grow and last until old-age, but if my trend holds true, the ones which I’m continuing to make through running will be among those still there when we’re old and grey!

Running friends gamely learning to surf at my wedding

The ugly side of running

My running friends