The Team That Didn't Know Each Other (Until They Got Muddy)
Craig turned 40 this year. He wanted to mark it with a personal challenge, something to aim at, a reason to drag himself out of bed and train. He signed up for the Wolf Run Trilogy and figured that would be that.
Then something unexpected happened. People at work found out. And then more people found out. And then suddenly Craig's personal challenge wasn't so personal anymore.
"More people came forward wanting to challenge themselves," he says. "Either one race or all three."
Craig works at Bidfood in Cannock. Warehouse, transport, admin, different departments, different worlds. The kind of workplace where you can spend years nodding at someone in a corridor without ever really knowing them. He'd barely spoken to one of the guys who ended up doing the Spring Wolf with him. Now they always stop and chat when they pass each other. That's what a few hours of Wolf Run bonding does.
The Spring event was the first time most of them had done anything like this. No experience, no idea what was coming, all of them new to Wolf Run and mud runs entirely. But they all got round it and loved it. "Since completing the Spring, we have people now interested in the Summer and Autumn runs," says Craig.
It's not a hard sell or a team building away day stuck in a boardroom. It's people who had a genuinely good time, supported each other and had a laugh. And for any business thinking about staff wellbeing and team culture, it ticks every box.
The thing Craig keeps coming back to is the shared memory. Not just the event itself but what it left behind. "It's great fun to talk about at work, even weeks and months after." The inside jokes, the moment someone nearly didn't make it over an obstacle, the state everyone looked at the finish line. That stuff sticks in a way that a team meeting never will.
"I did enjoy doing it more as a team," he says. "You get to share those memories with others."
He's proud of the Bidfood Cannock crew. All of them, new to this, none of them knowing quite what they were getting into. All of them showing up and challenging themselves anyway.
Thinking about bringing your work crew to the Wolf Run?
Get in touch on info@thewolfrun.com