Our Favorite Race Medals of All Time

There's only one real reason why we lace up our shoes, put on our game face and toe the line on race day. No, it's not the feeling of accomplishment of training hard and executing to the best of your abilities, or exploring new areas while getting in a good workout—it's the ever-attractive finisher medal.

Finisher medals have been a thing in the running world for a long time, but it feels like race organizers have truly stepped up their game in recent years. These medals are bigger, heavier and blingier than ever before, and have become a not-so-surprising way to attract casual runners to sign up for new events. Throw a "collect them all" tag onto any race series and—like a moth to a flame—runners (including us), who generally would only compete in one race a year, find themselves back at it again before they know it.

Polling our audience has become somewhat of a tradition at ACTIVE.com, with our popular "21 Awesome Age Grouper Triathlon Bikes" and "25 More Awesome Age Grouper Triathlon Bikes" articles leading the way, but this time we're refreshing our "Best Race Day Medals" article with medals submitted by you.

From a medal with a hilarious spelling error, to medals with some surprisingly useful features, here are 20 of our fan-submitted favorite race medals of all time.

1 Jarrett Winn