My Feet

This post is for The Red Dress Club's writing assignment, Red Writing Hood. This week's prompt was to write a short piece, either fiction or non-fiction, about something ugly - and find the beauty in it.

While running has done some awesome things for my body, there are a few bad things it has done to me as well.

This might be total over share but my feet have been looking pretty awful lately. We are talking never-ending blisters that refuse to heal completely, rough and cracked heels, dry peeling skin pretty much all over and basically just a general overall ugly appearance. Then, sadly, last week, I lost my first toe nail. Yep, I now no longer have a second toe nail on my left foot! I never thought I would be saying that. Who loses a toe nail?! Apparently, this is totally normal to runners! Geesh! Needless to say I haven't had a pedicure in months and stopped caring about painting my toe nails awhile ago. Why bother?

My feet DON'T look quite this bad but you get the idea.


Don't get me wrong though. I take care of my feet when I go on long runs. I wear proper sneakers, and thanks to my sister, I wear fancy shmancy socks. I apply the amazing Blister Block and Vaseline, baby powder and then I even put on mole skin on the hot spots of my feet in order to prevent blisters. Even though I take all these preventative measures, after a long run, I still manage to grimace when I take my shoes and socks off. After 10 miles, everything starts to suffer a little bit.

Despite this long list of negative characteristics of my feet, I still manage to think they are amazing. I find immense beauty in the fact that I have run countless miles on these feet. In the past two years, they have gotten me through two Half-Marathons, a 60 mile long walk, many short and long training runs, including a few 20 milers and next Sunday a Full-Marathon. For that I'll always be grateful to them. Perhaps, like the roughness of a persons hands show you how much they work with them, you can tell a lot about a person just from their feet. This sounds like something Forrest Gump said, right? Well, if this is true, then you can surely see that I've been using my feet a lot lately.

I'm thankful that these ugly feet have not given up on me and haven't given me any real pain or serious discomfort. I suppose beauty is pain though, right? Maybe that's why so many things in life can be considered ugly or painful and beautiful at the same time. My feet most certainly follow along with that thought. My feet may be ugly right now but they are also incredibly beautiful too.