As Mark rests his blog writing hand and relaxes to watch the fantastic results of Team Sky and Chris Froome last weekend, I am taking up the reign this month and I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts with you all!

Froome’s amazing win last weekend is testimony to not only his brilliant abilities but those of the wider Team Sky. Teamwork is a vital part of any productive organisation but never more so that when working on events! It is proven that teamwork helps to build trusting relationships with your co-workers, reduces burnout and increases productivity across the company.

Here at Pennine we have had a bumper summer of events so far, however us ladies decided to take a day off from delivering events to take part in one ourselves: Alison, Denise, Ellie, Lauren, Nilma, Natasha, Jemma, Kirsty, Suzanne and I met up early on the Saturday morning to join the ‘Pink Army’ and take part in our local 5k Pretty Muddy assault course.

The team was made up of a range of ages and abilities, with some of the group having trained and prepared in advance and others not so much! However, as the course entailed a 5k run and assault course in mud it was going to be a challenge for all of us as no one knew what to truly expect.

Off we went with a lofty ambition in our head that we would all stick together all the way round and as we hit the first hurdle some soared over it others, myself included, generally launched ourselves over and we managed to all stay together, then the next and the next. By this point the different abilities saw the more athletic of us become a distance view upfront – our idea of staying together throughout proving more difficult to achieve and without realising we had instinctively broken into smaller groups to offer support and encouragement to everyone within our team.

As the slower of us caught up at each assault course the rest of the team and stopped and were now acting as our very own cheer squads to encourage and entice us over the more challenging elements of the course – my own Achilles heel being the net climb!

We finally hit the home stretch as a group and headed for the last obstacle all throwing ourselves over the top at the same time and landing unceremoniously in a large pool of mud! Very muddy and exhilarated we had set out as a team and completed as a team – with a lot of laughs along the way.

What this has made me realise that it doesn’t matter how busy you get you should never underestimate the importance of having a strong and supportive team behind you who will take the lead when necessary and drop back to help if someone is struggling. The best team members realise that sometimes you are the star and sometimes you help the star – and to me that sums the Pennine Events team perfectly.