I hate zombies. I am not talking about being terrified of them, I am speaking of not being a fan of the zombie fad that has been going around this past decade or so. My brother has been a huge zombie nut for quite a few years, and I made the mistake of attending a pair of zombie pub crawls in Fargo with him where both ended up being disastrous nights. I think that is one of the reasons I am not all about this zombie craze, the other being the fervor over The Walking Dead television show. You hear so much good buzz for a television show, and it makes me want to ignore it out of spite. I have never watched an episode, but I did play the Telltale developed episodic Xbox 360 game last year which I found to be quite awesome.
So yeah...zombies, when I first heard of the Zombie Run 5K taking place in town I intentionally ignored it. But a few of the people I ran The Color Run with last month are zombie fans and were forming a team again for this run, and I am all for running with friends so Derek, Brooke, Jesa, Ryan and myself hooked up to form team Zombies Ate My Neighbors. How the Zombie Run works is that you wear a pair of flags exactly like flag football back in the elementary school days, and interspersed throughout the 5K course are pairs of zombies about every third mile. Obviously they are going for your flags, if they get both of them before you finish you are "zombified" and eliminated from the final race "survivor" standing, though you are still welcomed to finish the course. One handy tip from another team before the race was to keep an eye out for zombies in piles of leaves.
Keeping up with my streak of awful weather for races carrying over from the Wild Hog half, the rain was coming down hard and this time the wind was in full gear too. Walking from the parking lot to the Choice Gym where the race was taking place at and enduring that morning's weather proved to be a bit much. It also proved to be too much for many of the 110 registered contestants, because of that field only 67 showed up for the race.
Come awful rain and wind, the race still took place. And team Awesome Classic Super Nintendo Game started off together near the back of the pack! A couple minutes into the race Ryan and I split off from Derek, Brooke and Jesa and decided we will do our best to stay together and joked that we would shove each other into the awaiting zombie horde so we could preserve our precious flags!
After about every third mile, we ran into a pair of zombies, and early on they were manageable to avoid because there were usually a pack of other runners around us to distract them, and if they got close to us a quick little juke and turning up the jets for a few seconds was enough to shake them off. For about the second half of the race though when Ryan and I made our way through most of the field and the pack thinned out it proved to be more challenging and there were at least a few times where I felt a few good tugs on my flags, but miraculously they remained on me. That was probably the only upside to the awful weather, where the rain made the flags a bit slippery to get a good grip of.
Also, for the last half of the race them zombies were getting quite crafty at hiding places that I am not accustomed to in the movies. They were hiding in cars and behind fences and trees. It got to the point where anything I suspected of being a hiding spot for the last half of the race I just sped up momentarily and bolted in hopes of having the zombies decide I was not even worth pursuing. That and working in tandem with Ryan was a nice strategy where we pointed out where we saw potential zombies and tried juking in opposite directions to throw them off. It paid off for both of us because we both finished with both of our flags. Derek unfortunately lost both of his after an illegal zombie double team. Brooke lost one of hers and Jesa kept both. So overall our team kept 7 of its 10 flags, not bad!
Ryan and I ran into a little bit of bad luck during the race though. Good thing I decided not to wear headphones this time. Ryan and I were following another runner as we went past another checkpoint, and about a good block after we past the checkpoint we heard one of the race checkpoint coordinators yelling at us to come back and take a different turn we ran past. We lost two blocks and had to catch back up with the field, and we figured we lost a good minute that way. Finally, during the last stretch going back to the gym as we approached the parking lot at Choice I could not remember which parking lot entrance we came out of at the beginning, and there were no arrows pointing at which one to take with no coordinators nearby to point us where to go, so I did not want to risking cutting the race short and getting disqualified again so I took the longest way around the parking lot, and according to my GPS tracker Ryan and I ran an extra quarter mile all together. Thankfully, the people manning the time clock at the finish had mercy on us and saw us miss the turn, but said not to worry about since it was not labeled and no one was there to point where to go.
I finished about ten seconds ahead of Ryan as he started to slow down in the final stretch and he told me to finish ahead of him. With about a mile left we saw no one in front of us and we kept thinking there were at least a few more people who started off really fast and probably finished quite a bit faster than us. We waited up for Derek, Brooke and Jesa to finish and gave high fives all around. We warmed up inside the gym with some post race refreshments and decided to wait around for the awards to be given out because Ryan and I were thinking maybe we cracked the top 5 or at least got a top time in our age bracket.
When they went down the Top 3 Zombie Survivors, I was surprised when I heard Ryan's name as second place, and then I realized that I was going to be first. It felt weird, I guess I did not have a big victory rush because they did not inform either Ryan and I about this as we crossed the finish line so I did not have that awesome Hollywood moment at the finish line. It still felt pretty good though to win a race, as I thought that day would never, ever happen. It is worth mentioning my own Roger Maris asterisk however. Technically, I won the race, although there was one person that finished ahead of me but he got both of his flags taken from the zombie horde and thus he was "eliminated" from the official standings. Ryan and I won the best time in our 20-29 male and 30-39 male brackets respectively too.
Since it was a smaller race, and more focused on fundraising there was no big trophy for the finish, but I did get a first place branded medal and a Zombie Run themed tshirt, hat and mug for my efforts! I may have had to go through the most bitter weather yet and endure some crazy zombies in the process, but I can finally lay claim to winning a race! I had no idea I had this in me, but am very grateful it did happen and that I was there to take in the moment with a few friends at my side. Only one more race to go before I hit 12 for the year! I am officially registered for a race the last weekend of this month, but if things go my way I may make it out to one more this weekend too.
5K
UND Autism - 4/20/13 - 26:22 - 23rd out of 74
Arthritis Foundation Zombie Run - 10/12/13 - 29:06 - 1st Place Survivor, 2nd out of 67 overall
Uffda Mud Run - 9/7/13 - ??:?? - Finished
Color Run - 9/21/13 - ??:?? - Finished
10k
Hillsboro Run - 6/13/13 - 50:17 - 23rd out of 55
Dewey Memorial - 6/1/13 - 50:21 - 15th out of 56
Firecracker - 7/4/13 - 53:13 - 42nd out of 92
Frozen Feat - 2/16/13 - 53:57 - 50th out of 108
TRF Pioneer - 9/14/13 - Disqualified
Half Marathon
Fargo Rocks - 5/18/13 - 2:02:48 - 2062nd out of 5526
Grand Forks Wild Hog - 9/28/13 - 1:53:25 - 184th out of 649
