From Sketch to Medal: How The Warrior Was Made

The Warrior 21K took weeks of sketches, late night messages, stress over costs, and more revisions than we expected, before it finally became real.

Like every medal at Walk Run Wrestle, it started as rough ideas. Bad sketches. Shapes that didn’t work. Colour combinations that looked good in our heads but not on screen. Most ideas never make it past that stage, and honestly, that’s how it should be. We’d rather scrap ten ideas than settle for something that just feels “fine”.

From the beginning, we knew one thing: We didn’t want a circle. We wanted something that looked chaotic in the best possible way. Something with energy. Something loud. A medal that felt like a Warrior before you even picked it up. When the first proper sketch was finished after multiple failed attempts, both of us had that moment of just looking at it and going: “Yeah… that’s it.” But weirdly, the medal still wasn’t fully there yet.

The biggest change came from something we hadn’t even considered ourselves. The colour White. That was actually suggested by our supplier, Kelly. Up until that point, we’d been focusing heavily on darker colours, but the second we saw the updated version with the white added in, everything changed. Suddenly the colours hit harder. The glow stood out more. The entire medal just came alive. It’s funny looking back now because the white feels so obvious, but neither of us thought of it ourselves.

Once the main design was locked in, the process became about refining every small detail. Tweaking colours. Adjusting depth. Making sure the glow actually worked properly and didn’t just feel like a gimmick slapped onto the medal. And honestly, this is where having a good relationship with your supplier matters massively. We trusted Kelly completely throughout the process. There was a lot of back and forth over about four revisions, usually through messages sent at either 6am or midnight. It became part of normal life for a few weeks. The ribbon was actually one of the first things we had ideas for. Even before the medal itself was fully designed, we already knew the ribbon needed that same neon energy. We discussed glitter at one point, but the more we thought about Warrior, the more we kept coming back to glow instead. Glow just felt right for this medal. More intense. More alive.

The scary part was the pricing. Because deep down, we already knew this medal wasn’t going to be cheap to make. When Kelly told us she needed a few days to speak to her manager and work out the costs, both of us immediately had the same reaction: “Oh no… this is going to be so much more expensive than we expected.” And that wait genuinely felt long. That’s one of the hardest parts when you’re building something like this. You can love a design yourself, but you never really know how other people are going to react. Spending that kind of money is always scary, especially when you’re still growing. But we believed in it enough to take the risk. From the very first message to actually holding the medal in our hands took around four weeks. The medals arrived at My house on a Wednesday, but because me and Becca live in different towns, life got in the way and we couldn’t properly open them together until Friday. Which honestly was painful. There was just this sealed box sitting there for two days knowing what was inside it.

We originally planned to film a proper unboxing video, but the second we finally sat down to open them, all of that went out the window. We were too excited. And the very first thing we checked? The glow. Straight away. The crazy thing is the glow ended up being even better than we imagined. That was one of those moments where you instantly know the weeks of stress and tweaking were worth it. Then once we actually held them properly, everything else hit too. The weight. The finish. The colours. The way the white made everything stand out. That’s the moment it stops being an idea on a screen and becomes something real. We made the Warrior a 21K because we wanted it to feel like a bigger challenge. Something tougher. The medal felt worthy of that distance. And honestly, 21K just sat right with us from the start. It fit the energy of the medal perfectly. Could we have made it cheaper? Simpler? Easier? Probably. But that’s never been the goal with Walk Run Wrestle. We want every medal to feel like something worth earning. Something that stands out when you hold it. Something you’d actually want to display and collect long after the run is finished. We wanted it to feel like something you’d genuinely want to keep on display after finishing The Warrior 21K is loud, energetic, and built to stand out — especially once the lights go down and the glow kicks in. More importantly, we think it’s something worth finishing for. Your Run. Your Way.