ARTICLE: Collecting Toenails
Toenail_portraitThis is a one of a kind story. Most athletes at some time or another lose a toenail—or two or three. Most of us have simply tossed them and not given it a second thought. For many of us, losing a toenail is a rite of passage into marathoning, ultrarunning, hiking or adventure racing.
Jan Ryerse had an idea and created a necklace out of toenails. Some are his and some are from his friends. He writes: “Most of the toenails are mine - I lost all 10 toenails after Badwater when I ran it in July 02 - that picture on the SLUG website of me removing a loose toenail with needle nose pliers is one of them - all 10 of my lost Badwater toenails are on the necklace.
The toenail with the hole in it is my daughter's big toenail, which she lost after running her first marathon, the Marine Corps marathon (I trained with her and ran it with her). She got bad bleeding and swelling under the nail and ultimately went to see the doctor who drilled a hole in it to relieve the pressure.
Fellow St. Louisan and a good running buddy of mine, Mark Williams, gave me a toenail he lost after Western States.
Toenail_necklace_labeled Doug Ryan from the Dallas area lost both big toe toenails after running a sub 24 hour 100 in his first 100, the Heartland in Kansas. I ran some of the race with him.
Jim Stroup lost a toenail from running Rocky Racoon about three years ago.
Victoria White, the race director of the Double Chubb 50K here in the St. Louis area gave me a small toenail she lost at Howl at the Moon in Danville IL.
All the donated toenails are labeled in the picture. The picture of the toenail necklace was published in the last edition of our SLUG newsletter and has received quite a bit of attention.
The necklace has received quite a wide range of responses - from “ooohh how gross” to “ooohh how cool.” Some want to know if it was disinfected and the answer is, No. I just glued the toenails onto small wood beads, which had holes in them and then strung the beads on a cord. “
So now the questions is, What do you do with all your toenails? I know I'll be saving mine.

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