You know, I really thought I loved zombies before yesterday. Well, I can honestly say it’s nothing compared to how much I love zombies right now.
Before I get started on the race recap, let me throw a huge shout out to my best friend, Ellie. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUFF!!! I love you so much, now let’s go eat some BRAINS!!!!
Ellie is a Sith Lord and I’m an Eskimo. (There’s really no doubt as to who is the cooler one in this relationship. She wins by a [muddy, slippery, full of infected undead]landslide.)
In celebration of El’s birthday (and our love for anything zombie related) we (Ellie, her boyfriend Ryan, Shane, and myself) signed up fpr the Atlanta location of Run For Your Lives on March 3, 2012. It’s an oostacle ridden 5K with a very fun catch. Scattered throughout the course they have zombies who try to take your life!
Your ‘life’ is actually a flag belt with three flags on it, and if the manage to grab all three flags you are then considered infected. Finishing with even one of the three will label you a survivor. (I was under the impression there were separate finisher’s medals for survivors vs infected, but they were the same. No big deal of course, just an observation.)
We stayed at a hotel about 40 minutes away on Friday night, with plans to camp on site Saturday night. (Those plans did not workout, but more on that later!) Friday night a rather large Thunderstorm rolled through the area, but the weather on Saturday morning was not awful. It was overcast and raining slightly, but since we were expecting more thunderstorms, we didn’t think it would be too bad.
It was however chilly (only in the 50s so for a lot of people that’s not chilly at all… but it is for us, especially when it’s raining!) and I wasn’t expecting that (thank you early spring for giving me a false sense of warmth security!) so I didn’t pack any jackets for us. The only reason I even had my warm coat was because I wanted it as a cover during the drive and grabbed it last minute. (Thank God I did! Poor Shane didn’t have a jacket, so we shared it a lot!)
We were registered for the 1:00 pm wave, they recommended arriving around 2 hours early to allow for parking and packet pick-up. Parking was super fluid and easy, but I was worried about a snag when it came to packet pick-up. I had registered under my maiden name, and all of my identification has my married name on it!!
Luckily they were cool with it, as long as the name on my waiver matched my id. (No lawsuits from me!) Bag check was a super easy also, though I think that depended on what time you went there. There were super busy times and really big lulls. We got lucky! I did make the mistake of checking my camera as soon as we got there, though! So I have no pre-race photos at the actual event. Here is one from before we arrived though!
Don’t worry. I put that hair in a ponytail as soon as we arrived!
So we walked around and watched the waves before us go (they were in 30 minute increments) and the finishers cross the finish line (and slide down the mud slide!). Honestly, though, we were mostly trying to stay warm. The temps were in the 50’s, and it was raining and the wind was blowing pretty fierce. Also, both men didn’t have jackets. They may be from Washington, but that wind had some bite! We shared jackets as much as possible. Lucky for Shane, one of my favorite activities is snuggling that boy!
When it got closer to our heat time we made our way over to the starting corrals, which were broken up into three lines.
We decided to go with the Entrée because we had trained at a 10-11 minute mile pace. While we were waiting, we decided to use the mud as face paint. (Yeah it’s probably gross, but we ended up with it all over our faces anyway!) I wish we could have gotten pictures of our face paint, but mine was hand print on the lower half of my face, Ellie had claw marks on her cheeks, and Ryan had his entire left side of his face painted. Shane opted to remain clean for as long as possible.
When it was finally time to line up, we started to walk down the tunnels, or tried to at least!! The mud was so sticky that our shoes created a vacuum with every step, so we fought every single step we took! I was wondering how on Earth we would be able to run when we couldn’t even walk!
I just want to take a second to point out that Iron E. Singleton who plays the character T. Dogg on the television show The Walking Dead was at this event. We lucked out, and he actually came over to us and opened the corral gates for us! I absolutely love that show, and it was such a trip to have that happen! Once he pulled back the gate and said to “Run For Your Lives!!!” we were off.
I’m going to take a breather there, because this is a long post already and I don’t want it to become a tl;dr. I’ll finish up with the race recap tomorrow, and I promise it won’t be more than that. It was only a 5K after all!
