Should marathon medals be larger?

My wife and I got the above medals for completing the 2009 Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio Half Marathon and Marathon, respectively, this past Sunday.

Each is 2.75″ in diameter.

And you might have thought when you saw the title of this blog post that I wrote about how there seems to be something of an obsession among some marathoners to get larger and larger medals.

For example, the Texas Marathon in Kingwood caused quite a stir following the 10th-annual running on 1 January 2009 because of the size of its medal. The best way that I can describe the medal is that it was the size of the cooking surface on an electric hot-plate.

I know some marathoners who care so much about medal size that they will not enter an event when the finisher medal is not large enough — in their eyes, anyway.

But, if you expected that I had written about the absolute size of marathon medals, then you were on the wrong track.

No, my question is about the size of marathon medals relative to half-marathon medals when the marathon and half marathon are hosted by the same organizer at the same location on the same day.

For example, should the 2009 Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio Marathon medal have been twice as large as the 2009 Rock ‘n’ Roll San Antonio Half Marathon medal?

My wife blurted this out in a rhetorical fashion when she greeted me at the finish line this past Sunday. She had already received her half-marathon medal, and she was surprised that my marathon medal was no larger than hers. In essence, she argued that my medal should have been twice as large as her medal, given that I covered twice the distance that she covered.

What do you think about the relative sizes of the medals for a same-day/same-location marathon and half marathon? Does a constant size not give enough “credit” to those who finish the marathon? Or does it even matter to you? Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment here. Thanks!