Motivation to RUN!

D's weekend Run - 5k of hills, obstacles and.. well zombies - 51:49

This weekend I participated in the most unusual race I've witnessed yet. Run For Your Lives Zombie runs take place across the country. They're a combination of a 5k (its a timed race) and an obstacle course. Each runner also gets three flag football style flags, which zombies try to rip off you the entire race. If you've ever felt like you needed a little extra motivation during a run to keep moving, believe me, a screaming zombie charge at you will get you moving. 

The race is huge, with waves of runners leaving every fifteen minutes from 8am to 6pm. It was surprisingly well organized... except that for packet pick up and bag drops, they had lines forming by alphabet. Rather than evenly dividing the letters by the anticipated number of runners, the evenly divided it by the number of letters. K-O had huge lines, while U-Z was mostly empty... I spent a lot of time in lines that day. 

The run started by going up a ridiculous hill. I tried to keep up with Corey, who is much faster than me, so by the time I got to the top I was already sweating. That was when the mud started - inches, even feet at time, of slippery thick mud that caked on my shoes and prevented me from having any traction at all.

Coincidentally, the first zombies were waiting at the top of the hill. So, in a dead sprint, I failed to make a turn, broke through the 'wrong way' tape and almost flew down the other side of the hill. Fortunately I held on to the tape and make it back on course. 

The rest of time was spent going through smokey rooms with hanging shocking wires, crawling through a couple (but not many) obstacles, and trying to dodge zombies. Most would stand there and lunge occasionally. Occasionally, just as you think you're safe, you'd hear screaming behind you and someone yelling 'runner!' as a zombie starts chasing a group down. I lost a flag to one of those when I slipped in the mud. 

A strategy I found pretty quickly was to stay with larger groups. It worked for the most part, since you could overwhelm a small group of zombies with a larger group. Except, it backfired when I took the lead and was pushed into a zombie by someone trying to pass me...

My favorite Zombies were two nuns that just stood there as people ran by, heads down hands folded together in prayer. Right after I passed them, I hear them screaming. I see a guy sprinting all out past me yelling 'that's out of my nightmares'... as he just kept sprinting. 

So, I didn't survive the Zombie Apocalypse. And even though my shoes were so muddy I could barely walk, let alone run, it turned out to be a pretty good work out. 

Not to mention, the GIANT, very fast water slide at the end made it all worthwhile. 

hill at the beginning

Andy, D, Michelle and Corey

Mariachi Zombies on their break

Huge water slide ending in a pit of muddy water

Last Obstacle; and electric fence