How much do we all love that little piece of metal that’s given to us at the end of a run?
It’s a competitive currency of the running world. Does anyone else sign up for a race and look for the medal straight away? See what the next piece bling is going to be hung round our necks once we cross the finish line?
What I love is that it’s all about those finish lines, not finish times. We all run the same distance and you all get the same shiny piece of metal, which means the world to you at that very moment in time.
It’s a motivator, it’s emotional, it is a reward to ourselves for all our hard work. It’s that sign that you’ve achieved another goal and you should all feel extremely proud when it’s given to you at the end of every race, especially when you can look back at it and say ‘I did that!’.
It’s something that we get to keep forever and remind ourselves of a time when, we worked hard for something, we sweat blood and tears to get to the finish line…..ok, not so much blood but I have finished races with blood sodden trainers before! After this happening more than once, I never forget to cut the toenails down before a run. Taking your trainers off to a replay of the Amityville horror, you know, the bit with the blood running down the walls (ok maybe a bit over-dramatic) is something I don’t want to keep reliving!
That feeling of elation, when you cross that line and a smiley volunteer puts that medal round your neck is worth all the training….the rain, the cold, the painful calves & hamstrings and hours of physio, all for that one glorious moment!
So what do I do with mine once I’ve finished a run? They’re dotted around the house, shoved in various cupboard and drawers……..Until now…. The lovely chaps at medaldisplays.co.uk have sent me a medal hanger for me to pop all my lovely medals onto. Fair play, the hanger is superb quality, nice and sturdy and I’ve started pulling out all my medals from various hiding places to hang up on it. I think I’d forgotten some of the races I had done and seeing the medals again brings it all back. For me, I think it will be a lovely reminder of moments to go back on. The race, the people I ran it with, the euphoria of us all earning the same medal, the joy, the bragging rights and most importantly a reminder that YOU did it. Those medals represent a lot of time out on the road and in Diva Sport working hard to get there. I still haven’t got round to hanging it up yet but it looks simple enough even for me!
Do you remember their very first medal? I do. Having run for years pretty much every other day, I’d never actually entered a race, so I signed up to my first 10k. Got there not knowing what to expect, ran the race, got across the finish line and was handed a white unprinted plastic bag, no smiley volunteer was waiting with an armful of medals to greet me as I crossed the line. I still remember to this day what the bag contained. Bottle of water (standard) and always appreciated at the finish line, a ‘fun size’ mars bar (Fun size? Not even a mouthful. Where’s the fun in that? I inhale food after a run, so the fun size mars bar wasn’t even getting close!)…. Some bumf about other run events and then hiding at the corner of the bottom of the bag, lonely and feeling rejected, a medal the size of a £1 coin, which had been hand tied with the biggest knot into the sliver of thin blue ribbon. As small as it was, I had a medal. My first one! I still have it now and yes, it will be going on my super new medal display hanger!
So what’s your next medal going to be? For me, I’m going to the Royal Welsh Trail running festival on 21st May. I’ll be running the trail half marathon with the lovely Becca & Hannah from Run Wales. This is for all of us our very first trail run. We have all bought trial running shoes, we’ve started running off-road to get some training in, bearing in mind we only have 4 weeks to go until the race! We will also be blogging about the event, so keep an eye out for an update and of course a photo of the medal, which is wooden, so this will be my first non-blingy medal, that’s if I don’t get lost in the wilderness first!