It is, of course, not even a piece of paper. The certificate is an automatically generated PDF.
Yet I am rather chuffed that Ironman's points system has placed me in the top 10% of my age group for 2016.
2016 was only my second year doing triathlon competitively, and saw me compete in my first full Ironman.
It seems I'm position 34 in the UK and 604 worldwide after two of their events last year - IM Maastricht and IM70.3 Weymouth.
This apparently puts me in the bronze category of their All World Athlete programme. As yet I have no idea what that entails. I suspect it allows me to spend more money on something with a bronze logo on it, we'll see. But it's nice anyway.