Is it all about the race bling?
How many of you out there race for a medal? Sure, most of us enjoy earning a nice shiny piece of metal attached to a ribbon at the end of a race, but is it all about the race bling?
What do race medals mean to you? I remember when I ran my very first race which was Burnham half marathon. To be honest, I didn’t even expect to receive anything at the end. To my surprise, I was rewarded with a pretty cool glass block containing his & hers runners.
My first ever race “bling”
I didn’t race again for a couple of years but when I did I received my first medal. I earned the same medal, yep, exactly the same bar the ribbon, 2 years later and I didn’t even know what to do with them. They were discarded to a “crap” drawer, never to be seen again properly until I rediscovered running in 2016. By that time my first medal had perished somewhat unfortunately.
When I ran the Brean Down Challenge for the first time I discovered I liked medals. I then decided to book more races to earn more of these pieces of bling.
My collection started to grow over time. If I’m honest I think I became consumed with earning medals and as sad it sounds I actually didn’t enter races that didn’t have a finishers medal!
I know there are plenty of people out there that feel the same as I do. However, I also know there’s a lot of people who couldn’t care less about a medal and store them in a sock drawer for example.
Which moves us onto medal displays. Do you display your hard earned race medals?
Steph bought me my first medal rack for my birthday last year. At that point I didn’t have too many and those I did have were hung perilously on two picture hooks above our bed!
My race medals & trophies
It was around this time that I discovered virtual run medals. The premise is simple, you pay for a medal online then you run a predetermined distance and they post it to you when you’re done. These can vary from race distances to the overall monthly mile count like the ones I did.
I think I got into virtual running medals for two reasons; firstly, due to working shifts I’m not always able to race on Sundays which obviously impedes my medal collecting ability. Secondly, I signed up for several of the Awesome Running 100 mile challenge medals which gave me more motivation to run all the miles.
The medals themselves were pretty cool but the novelty soon wore off. I did attempt to complete all 12 months of the 100 mile challenge but life got in the way. I also found that over time I didn’t appreciate them as much as my race medals.
Don’t get me wrong, virtual medals are well earned and some of them are ridiculously cool but they don’t have the same meaning. They don’t have the emotional attachment or the memories (both good and bad) and that’s what’s life’s about, creating memories.
For fathers day this year, my girls gave me a new medal rack for my virtual medals. I now have them hung up again after separating them from my race medals when we moved house.
My virtual medal collection
Its nice see them all up on the wall together, not just for the pride of it all but also to hopefully inspire my daughters.
They don’t have to get into running but I hope that seeing what I have managed to achieve over the years will inspire them to follow their dreams and work hard to make them a reality.
So how do you feel about your race medals?
Are you a display or sock drawer kind of person?
Let me know in the comments or feel free to hit me up on my Instagram or Facebook pages.
Until next time!
