Finding racing awards that participants will actually use
I was in the process of cleaning my desk area to be a little more organized. By organized, I mean putting things that I use in places where I can find them. One of the first items was a coffee mug full of pens and pencils. As I went through the pen collection and tried each one out to see if it still worked I came across one of the pens I used to give race finishers in my half marathon. This pen had the date from March 13, 2005. That was 15 years ago. It took a few fast scribble marks on the paper before the ink flowed and the pen worked. We gave quality finisher awards back then. Two other pens from 2012 and 2013 were in the mug and they worked great. After the 2013 race, we wanted a finisher’s award that was a little more visible and started giving runner’s caps to the finishers. I still see a few runners at races wearing the cap we handed out back in 2015-2017.
The coffee mug that we handed to the finishers for many years are still being used in my house. In fact, other than a couple of coffee mugs that my wife uses, they are the only mugs on the shelf. It is a nice 15-ounce ceramic mug with the race logo and sponsors name on it. A comment I get from the men that use the mug is, “This is a real man’s mug. I can get all four fingers around the handle and not that two-finger tea cup type.” The shelf has white mugs, grey mugs, blue mugs, black mugs, maroon mugs, and green mugs. I guess it depends on the mood you are in for morning coffee determines which color mug you use. My thought on giving a coffee mug to race finishers versus a medal to hang around the neck is after the race, what does a runner do with the finisher’s award? The medal probably goes on a peg on a wall in the trophy room. After the next race, it is hidden behind the new medal. The coffee mug was meant to drink morning coffee or tea every day and is visible to everyone in the room. The sponsor continues to get recognition and the race also gets recognition for many years after the race. Not all mugs are used to drink morning coffee. I have some that hold pens and pencils on my desk. Some runners put them on a shelf alongside the other trophies that they have. Whatever use the runner made of the mug, and the pen, the race name continues to be a reminder of running up that hill on Center Point Road and recalling some great stories about their experience.
When we first held the Moe’s Better Half Marathon back in the early 80’s, we gave finisher medals to every runner. They were about two inches across, a couple a bit larger, but were good quality medals. I still have a couple to remind me of those first races. We had a bunch of them left over and after a few years I gave them to one of the physical education teachers to give to the students that ran a total of 13 miles over the semester.
This nostalgia of medals and awards started me looking back at some of the awards I had earned years ago. A quick glance at some of these awards makes it very obvious that times have changed. In college, I placed in the low hurdles at the State Track meet. The medal was about the size of my thumb nail and I need my glasses — and maybe a magnifying glass — to read the place finish on the back of the medal. A medal for winning my weight class in the New England YMCA Wrestling Championships is one inch wide. It has a triangle on the front for the YMCA insignia. The biggest medal I have is the three-and-a-half-inch circle of heavy metal from a power lifting meet. The point of this is, where to keep these medals? The small ones are in a bag stored in a dresser drawer. The larger ones —the early Moe’s Better Half and the power lifting medals — are either in a drawer or on a shelf hidden someplace. I imagine I could get creative and make a frame to put them on and hang it on a wall someplace. They are nice awards and should be displayed someplace where most likely I will be the only person to see them. The coffee mugs and pens are used every day and anybody that comes over for a cup of coffee will drink their coffee from them.
The other type of award is a plaque. These are meant to be hung on a wall for others to see. I have some for being an officer in a club, one for running over 2,000 miles one year, another for recognition of years of service to a committee, and one for being a softball umpire of the year for a district. It is nice to be recognized for service or achievement and a plaque is probably one of the most popular awards given to the individuals that earned them. I gave a plaque with a copy of one of my paintings on the front to place finishers the last couple of years of the half marathon. It was unique and no other race was going to be able to duplicate it.
The problem with plaques was brought to my attention at a meeting one day when another member who had plaques of his own said, “After you have died and relatives and siblings try to sort out your things, how many of them are going to take a plaque to hang in their home?” Not many of them will take a running trophy, or a hanging medal off the wall, or a plaque from a race they did not run, and put it in a box to take home with them. They might take a mug or two, and a good pen that writes, but I bet those medals will be lost somewhere in the attic.
The point of this use of awards is that you, as a person, won or earned those awards and are reminders of good times and efforts. Enjoy them, display them for your pleasure, and recall the event that got you the award. Do not worry about anybody else’s use of them later. Enjoy them now and know that you put the effort in to win them.
