Last week I wrote about prevention and being proactive. I emphasized that you are the key to prevention. I want to share an email I received from a friend that is a great example of this in action. Lisa told me about her friend and gave me permission to share the story:
My friend ran a 50km x 2 (100km total, over two days) race a few weeks ago. Over the past six months he has put a lot of work into his running training and has been running beautifully.
I was away so when I got back I dropped him a text to see how his race went. He told me what happened and in the conversation said that he would be losing many of his toenails. I ask why and he said he forgot to cut his toenails.
As you can imagine I didn’t reply to this at all because I would have thrown some insulting words his way.
He has been trail running for more than a decade and been doing adventure racing for over a decade. He spent a fairly sizable amount on his race entry and it must be about 900km to travel to the race. He put in six months of training to get stronger and faster. And he forgot to trim his toenails! This is more than elementary and is totally stupid. It’s tough to have sympathy (I have none!) when friends do silly things like this. He knows better.
Lisa de Speville, Johannesburg, South Africa
Lisa’s Adventure Racing website
FEAT: Fascinating Adventure Racing Talks
Lisa’s Blog
This story speaks for itself. I have often talked about how athletes spend a lot of time and money in preparation for an event but fail to plan for good foot care. More times than I care to remember, I have seen athletes quit a race or be pulled from a race because of feet gone bad. It doesn’t have to be that way.
I’ll say it again, you are the key to prevention.
