Defying Death Valley

CHRIS BALLARD

August 31, 2009

It's been a month now, and the top of Arthur Webb's right big toe remains a sunken rectangle of pale, wrinkled skin. Not that he's upset, considering that Webb is the one who yanked the toenail off with a pair of pliers in the first place. It's something he does to both big toes every year, just after he squeezes his feet into a pair of too-small shoes and runs 15 miles to loosen the nails. Otherwise, they tend to crack and bleed as the toes swell like tiny, overinflated balloons during the Badwater Ultramarathon, the grueling 135-mile race through Death Valley that Webb has run for the past 12 summers.