Has anybody heard of putting nail polish on your toe nails to prevent your toes from getting blisters during the 26.2 miles Ironman shuffle?
Many years ago, a group of female and male triathletes hand a bonfire, sit around and chat the night before the big race. The females said that if you paint your toenails, you won’t get blisters. Maybe it was the pre-race carbo loading (a cold beer), but the females convinced about 10 guys to get their toe nails painted before the race. At first, the females said that “We’ll paint the toenails with see thru color, so nobody will know that you’re wearing toe nail polish”. OK, after a few guys had their toenails painted, the females decided to play a little joke and started using multiple colors on the guys toenails. It was all crazy fun, but the most interesting thing is that none of the 10 guys had blisters the next day after covering the 140.6 miles. Was it luck, coincidence or is there some truth to painting your nails.
Has anybody else heard of this ritual or do you know of another crazy “Ironman” ritual?
makes no sense unless you have been blistering your toenails and not your skin
I may have been involved in this painting of the toenails, I have had no issues with blisters after painting the nails.
The sock choice could be the reason but…
As a person who’s lost a nail or two, I can see the utility: the paint - especially a high gloss + a couple applications of Clear-coat - would make for a slicker interface between the nail and the sock (or shoe if going sockless) eliminating some of the blister-causing friction or torsion (you also lose toenails from an accumulation of “micro-wiggles”; trust me on this)
However, one would need to be careful which color to apply; stay away from black, or dark blues or dark reds, as they might camouflage and damage suffered
Not the same but I have started to paint my toenails to hide what is under my toenails! My daughters love painting my nails and pink/purple/blue or whatever color they choose looks way better than the dark purple I sometimes get on a few after races.
It’s not the painting of the toenails, it’s the pedicure itself. You can get a pedicure without any painting.
I used to get blisters between my toes (and the black toenail) until I started getting regular (monthly) pedicures. I learned this trick from my friend who ran ultras.
We did that back at the turn of the century but it was to hide the fact that they would turn black.
^^^^^This.
I have a bottle of neon green polish to cover black toenails. I’d rather have a quirky painted nail showing at swim practice than a black/damaged one. YMMV
I can tell you for certain this theory doesn’t hold up for me. I have to keep the middle nail on my right foot trimmed all the way down for any run greater than 5k or I will lose the nail. And yes, I routinely paint my toe nails. I did a 7.5 mile training run a couple weeks back and forgot to trim my toenail and about 6 miles into the run I knew I was going to lose that nail. It’s happened to me 3-4 times now.
One thing about painting your toenails when in Florida; if you use a bright red polish, you run the risk of an iguana taking a bite of your foot while sitting by the pool, thinking your toes are berries of some sort
