I'll admit, I had decided to do this race mainly because I liked the medal. For the past few years, the medal has been some form of a 3D space shuttle. This year they decided to start their "big bang series." The next 5 years will be a series of medals dedicated to each one of the space shuttles. If you do 3 of the 5 years you get the milky way medal and if you do 5 of the 5 years you get the intergalactic medal, too. This year's medal was dedicated to the Columbia shuttle.