I'm not sure when race organizers decided to start handing out medals for finishing a half marathon. Or a stair climb. Heck, they even give out a medal for finishing the Soldier Field 10 miler. It's a nice medal. And I'm not ungrateful, but finishing some of these events just doesn't seem like an accomplishment worthy of getting a medal. Maybe that's just me. I do have a few medals for placing or winning my age group in small races. If pressed, I can probably find those.
I have a bunch of the rest of those finisher medals sitting in a box somewhere. Others are piled in the bottom of a junk drawer. Don't get me wrong, I have some that I treasure. Boston, 
Paris, New York, and some of my Chicago marathon medals are definitely keepers. And for many of those, my wife has made shadow boxes with pictures of some of those races. Some of the races we have done together, and those bring back nice memories.
I don't want our house to be a museum to our running accomplishments. We like to think we have plenty of other interests. But it is nice to display some of it. In a corner of the basement. So I recently came accross a couple of neat new ways to put some of the more important memories out for people to see.
One I noticed in a magazine recently is a way to hang just your medals. I've seen several variations of this one. This one looks nice, but I suspect I would need several of them if I wanted to display all the medals I've collected. And, as I mentioned, few of them have much meaning to me anyway.
Another way to do it is with an improved concept of the shadow box. It's called the Z-Access frame, and you can put odd shaped objects, like medals, as well as pictures etc. in it and put it anywhere. I used one to display the sunglasses LoLo Jones wore when she won the national championship in the hurdles last summer. Yes, I was the track fan geek in the crowd who caught them, after she threw them into the crowd. I know, some people collect baseballs or footballs signed by their heroes. I have LoLo Jones' sunglasses. Anyway, You can find these frames online if you like. http://www.displayit3d.com/
Another issue is t-shirts. Suffice to say I have quite a few. A few years ago my mother-in-law made one of the the most thoughtful gifts ever. A talented seamstress, she made a quilt out of 30 of my favorite race shirts from the previous decade or so. I treasure it so much, I'm afraid to use it and get it dirty.
I've seen these advertised in the back of running magazines for years, but the fact my mother-in-law made it, makes it much more special to me. The shirts in the quilt she made are all cotton. In the several years since she made it, I have collected enough shirts for a couple more. Most of them are 'dri-fit' material though. I'm not sure how comfortable that would be in a quilt!
Anyway, it's a busy race season that's just getting underway. I've got many more shirts and finisher medals to collect in the next couple months, and hopefully an age group medal or two. Our basement corner wall is full, so I may have to rotate!
See you on the roads....
Instead of keeping your medals in a box, try this:
http://medals4mettle.org/
Medals4Mettle (M4M) is a non-profit organization that facilitates the gifting of marathon, half marathon, and triathlon finishers’ medals. Runners from around the world give their hard earned medals to Medals4Mettle. Our worldwide network of physicians and volunteers then awards these medals attached to a Medals4Mettle ribbon to children and adults fighting debilitating illnesses who might not be able to run a race, but are in a race of their own just to continue to live their life. It is in honor of this mettle and courage in bravely facing these challenges that they are awarded a medal.
Posted by: Deb Gutfeld | June 07, 2011 at 04:25 PM
Deb, I've read about that group in Runner's World. It's a great idea, and I will definitely look into it! John
Posted by: John Garcia | June 20, 2011 at 09:40 AM