By Martin Bulger
Don’t make the same mistake as me! Medals engraved with the name, date and distance of the event are generally quite acceptable souvenirs of your running. If you are disciplined enough to keep a paper/electronic record of those achievements as well, it becomes a useful point of reference, especially when your love of running is measured in decades.
My competitive running began when I was 13 and lasted 50 years… that’s an awful lot of medals! I didn’t know when I first started running that I’d still be running when I picked up my old-age pension!
While I have kept details of all my 160 marathons I have not been quite so dedicated with the other events that I’ve done… and that could be as many as 500. Just think of all those medals to look after, not to mention mugs, horse-brasses, plates, plaques and trophies.
So, what do you do with your medals? Display them by hanging them on hooks on the wall? And when you’ve run out of hooks and walls, do you then put them all in a drawer… and when the drawer is full, transfer them to a very large cardboard box in the attic… and forget about them?
Something to remember though – if, when you first won them did you put them round your neck for the walk back to your car? If so, it’s quite possible that those sweaty medals will now be rusty medals.
Should I be ruthless with mine and keep only those medals with special meaning and significance… and bin the rest?
I appeal to all of you but particularly those of you who are fairly new to running, what will you do when you have racked up a cricket score of running memorabilia? Heed my story, don’t leave it too late, be like Baldrick (of Black Adder fame) and have a cunning plan!