Medals 4 Mettle

What do you do with the medals you earn from racing?  Are they on display somewhere in your house?  Used as dress-up pieces for your children?  Or are they kept in a box/drawer/bag out of sight?

I was going through some of my things the other day and came across a box full of my medals that I've earned from various races that I've done over the years.  I got nostalgic looking over the medals and remembering the events, but then I realized that there had to be something better that I could do with them besides keeping them in a box collecting dust.  I did some research and came across an organization called Medals 4 Mettle.  You can find more information about the company here , but here is a quick blurb explaining what they are mainly about:

Medals4Mettle (M4M) is a non-profit organization founded in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 2005. Its mission is to celebrate and reward the individual and collective courage of all human beings by facilitating the gifting of marathon finisher’s medals from marathoners to people who have demonstrated similar mettle, or courage. The recipients can be any age and might have exhibited such mettle by dealing with disease, handicaps or any similar challenge. Marathon runners around the world, and others who have won medals, give their medals to Medals4Mettle. Then our nationwide network of physicians and others award these medals to those who might not be able to run a marathon, but are in their own marathon to continue to live their life.

 After reading over their website and looking at some articles about who they give the medals to I knew that I wanted to donate my medals to this wonderful organization!  The only medals that I decided to keep were the ones that I had previously made into Christmas ornaments (my first tri, my first 70.3, half-marathon) that were already packed up in my Christmas bins.  While I love getting a medal after a race, and taking the ceremonial picture wearing the medal at the finish (we all have those pictures!), the truth is at the end of the day the medal is put in a box with the rest of the bunch. I am very fortunate to have my health and be able to run, bike, swim, compete, race, etc.. and I honestly do not know what I would do if I couldn't do them. So, if I can bring a little ray of sunshine or hope to someone that is fighting a battle more difficult than I could possibly imagine then I would love to do it!  That is why I packed up my medals and am going to ship them out tomorrow!  Yeah!  I am so excited about this and I really hope I can make some sort of difference, however small it may me, in someone's life.