Run For Your Lives - Toronto (Oro, ON)
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about our experience at Run For Your Lives - Pittsburgh (held in Butler, PA; you can read about it here, or just scroll down a bit more)...well, last Friday we headed south to Meg's parent's place (with a co-worker that I'd convinced to run with us) to get closer to the Run For Your Lives race in Toronto (technically it was in Oro, about halfway between Barrie and Orillia). We pulled in late Friday night (around 23h30) and got up early the next morning (around 05h00) as Meg and I had to be on site two hours ahead of time to get "transformed" into the walking dead, and it was still about an hour drive from where her parent's live.
Getting there turned out to be relatively easy (I note, however, the differences in event regulations here in Canada, as there was a police presence - directing traffic and on site - and the beer garden was completely segregated from the rest of the venue), and parking was very straight-foward, although with the rain that had been steadily falling, I was concerned that the parking lot would turn into a mud pit, as it had at the first event in Darlington, MD, last October, where the unexpected volume of runners and spectators caused serious logistical problems (in the words of the Reed Street Productions folks, "Parking Ate Our Brains").
Once we were registered, had picked up our race belts (we'd decided to race in the 2:00pm wave, as well), and had made our way onto the event grounds, we headed for the Zombie Transformation Centre, where the production staff put us through a very efficient, but very thorough make-up process, complete with latex prosthetics, mud, and blood, lots of blood:
After the whole make-up process, we had a quick briefing from the race organizers and the course officials (all the course officials were in tactical gear, and were all members of the Zombie Squad - Toronto Chapter). What the briefing boiled down to was that everyone - runners and zombies - was there to have a good time, so be fair, and be a good sport. We got assigned to Zone 15, which was right after the water slide...it was a nice, wide, flat area with lots of room to run, which was good, as both Meg and I had signed up to be chasers (read: fast zombies).
MINOR SPOILER ALERT!!!! We'd been told in the briefing, as Cracks in The Armour has also pointed out, that it was our job to kill people (not literally...). The zombies in other zones we're only supposed to take the first couple flags, but by the time runners reached our area, very few had flags left (the overall survival rate was about 22%, if you look at the total number of "alive" finishers versus the total number of runners). If the stumblers ahead of us managed to get a flag from a particular runner, then we wouldn't target that runner, but we'd still chase them if there were no other viable targets (and we chased people without flags) just to keep them moving and keep them warm, because the pool at the bottom of the slide was insanely cold! (the only thing colder was the rain that fell on occasion and the "showers" that had been provided to clean the mud off after you'd finished) We didn't know just how cold the water slide really was until later in the afternoon, when we did the course ourselves...I had a couple of runners who didn't have flags left come up and ask for hugs and you could see they were shivering...
We decided to let the stumblers in our zone be our front line, turning to chase people who slowed down after they'd passed us by, thinking we were just harmless set pieces. While I personally didn't get many flags (whatever was in that pool wasn't just water, and it made the flags very, very slippery), we did chase a fair number of runners into the next section, where the stumblers just before the final obstacles made quick work of them. Perhaps our finest kill was that of a runner dressed as Alice from the Resident Evil movies. She had a good costume: the red dress from the first movie, and she'd dyed her hair blond...the only problem was that Meg, as you can tell from the photos, was dressed up as a 'zombie' Alice, so we couldn't let a living Alice get by. I scattered her shield (many runners who'd lost all of their flags ended up serving as blockers, keeping the zombies from the living members of their group) and Meg chased her the whole length of our zone, and when she narrowly escaped (you can see Meg's stomp of frustration in the video), I took up the chase and got her just as she hit the next section. Other runners were far luckier, like the one girl whose flag came part-way off her belt before it slipped from my fingers, but it was enough that she'd heard the flag tearing and thought she was done for. We cobbled together a video with some still shots and some of the footage from our GoPro (a second video, of our trip through the course, will follow later this week):
While we had a blast, and I hope most of the runners did too, some of the runners took things way too seriously...the attempting to block with your arms I get, since it is an instinctive reaction, but holding the flags, rolling them up so they weren't visible, or tying them to the flag belt, and then getting angry when a zombie tried to take your flags (there was some verbal abuse) is just poor sportsmanship. Granted, I've been on both sides of the fence now, and some (a very small fraction of the overall total) of the zombies at the Butler, PA, event were way too aggressive and definitely violated the 'no-touch' rules (Meg got bear-hugged at the Darlington, MD, event in October last year), so I don't doubt that there were some issues with zombies on our course. I just hope that we didn't cause anyone too much grief. Meg ended up taking an elbow to the head - if you've watched the video you know it was an accident, since the girl stopped to make sure everyone was ok, but I'm sure it hurt like hell.
The best runners were the one who were clearly there to have fun. They screamed, they shrieked, they jumped, they twisted, and they dodged dramatically. One of my favourites was a guy with a stuffed Yoda on his back, who ran at us yelling "Force Push! Force Push!". There was also a sort of strange camaraderie between those of us who had GoPros...for all of the videos that are up on YouTube, there aren't that many from the zombie point-of-view...so the runners who had them seemed to smile at me as they went by, or maybe they were hoping I wasn't going to chase them (I had one girl hold her camera behind her back so she could film me as I chased her down, although I am not sure the footage will be all that useful...).
Once we got pulled off the course, we headed back into the "Safe Zone" to pick up our bags, participate in some photo ops with runners (if anyone out there has photos of us, we wouldn't mind getting a copy...), get our medals and Zombie Horde t-shirts, and then take the make-up off. I decided to keep most of mine on, and to do the course in my costume...perhaps this was a mistake, as I was already sore from sprinting for the better part of three hours, and as I found out, running 5k wearing combat boots, combat pants, a tactical vest, and a head mounted camera, while already physically exhausted, is really, really hard. And boots get really, really heavy once they're wet. Luckily, the water slide wasn't until near the end, and it was not nowhere near as big as the one on the Butler, PA, course (which was two levels, and the second pit was just a giant mud puddle), which meant that I only had to run the last 200 or so metres in wet gear. Pre and post race photos are below...(the course was not nearly as muddy as the one in Butler, PA, was).
My co-worker, on the right, is a much faster runner than either Meg or I are, and she took off, running the whole course in sub 35 minutes. Had she lived, she would have won a prize for her age group, but she died before she hit the Smoke House (as did I), although she thinks she lost her last flag when another runner pushed her in front the group she had found herself with in order to create a diversion...she said she was so cold that she didn't want to wait around to watch Meg and I finish (she was also fighting a cold, and plunging into muddy, cold water probably didn't help her too much), so we don't have an after picture of her.
Meg managed to survive right up until the last gauntlet right before the long haul up the road to the Water Slide, when the zombies in the gauntlet did exactly what we had done in the morning, broke apart her shield (namely, me) by forcing their way between us...had she made it through that choke point, she would have been fine, as we came off the slide at a shift change and there were very few zombies on the course at that point (plus, it had just started to rain, and I think some people were running for cover)
We changed (it was raining, so we weren't entirely dry by the time we finished changing), packed up, and headed back north, with car heater on maximum, to hot showers, a hot meal (Vietnamese ginger chicken on rice noodles), and an early bed time. I think I packed it in around 21h00, and I have no memory of when Meg joined me, so I must have been dead to the world...by the time I woke up on Sunday morning my arms and legs were so stiff I could hardly move, and it was a long, long drive home...
All in all, it was an amazing weekend! While Meg and I had both participated as runners in earlier events, being on the course as a zombie was an awesome experience, and it is definitely one we are going to do again. Not sure if Reed Street Productions is bringing RFYL back to Canada next year (just a note, guys...if you do run an event in Canada next year, do it earlier in the year when it isn't so cold!), but we are so going to be in New York next August!
***** UPDATE - September 25, 2012 *****
We finally got around to editing our runner point-of-view footage. The video is below!
***** UPDATE - September 30, 2012 *****
I went back and put together some additional footage from the zombie point-of-view to make a third video. In doing so, I chopped out our opening photo montage, added a lot more of the chase scenes, flag snatches, etc., and opted not to add a soundtrack (it is fun listening to the runners scream). I also tried to identify the runners that had GoPro cameras (there were quite a few!). So, for your viewing enjoyment:
Getting there turned out to be relatively easy (I note, however, the differences in event regulations here in Canada, as there was a police presence - directing traffic and on site - and the beer garden was completely segregated from the rest of the venue), and parking was very straight-foward, although with the rain that had been steadily falling, I was concerned that the parking lot would turn into a mud pit, as it had at the first event in Darlington, MD, last October, where the unexpected volume of runners and spectators caused serious logistical problems (in the words of the Reed Street Productions folks, "Parking Ate Our Brains").
Once we were registered, had picked up our race belts (we'd decided to race in the 2:00pm wave, as well), and had made our way onto the event grounds, we headed for the Zombie Transformation Centre, where the production staff put us through a very efficient, but very thorough make-up process, complete with latex prosthetics, mud, and blood, lots of blood:
After the whole make-up process, we had a quick briefing from the race organizers and the course officials (all the course officials were in tactical gear, and were all members of the Zombie Squad - Toronto Chapter). What the briefing boiled down to was that everyone - runners and zombies - was there to have a good time, so be fair, and be a good sport. We got assigned to Zone 15, which was right after the water slide...it was a nice, wide, flat area with lots of room to run, which was good, as both Meg and I had signed up to be chasers (read: fast zombies).
MINOR SPOILER ALERT!!!! We'd been told in the briefing, as Cracks in The Armour has also pointed out, that it was our job to kill people (not literally...). The zombies in other zones we're only supposed to take the first couple flags, but by the time runners reached our area, very few had flags left (the overall survival rate was about 22%, if you look at the total number of "alive" finishers versus the total number of runners). If the stumblers ahead of us managed to get a flag from a particular runner, then we wouldn't target that runner, but we'd still chase them if there were no other viable targets (and we chased people without flags) just to keep them moving and keep them warm, because the pool at the bottom of the slide was insanely cold! (the only thing colder was the rain that fell on occasion and the "showers" that had been provided to clean the mud off after you'd finished) We didn't know just how cold the water slide really was until later in the afternoon, when we did the course ourselves...I had a couple of runners who didn't have flags left come up and ask for hugs and you could see they were shivering...
We decided to let the stumblers in our zone be our front line, turning to chase people who slowed down after they'd passed us by, thinking we were just harmless set pieces. While I personally didn't get many flags (whatever was in that pool wasn't just water, and it made the flags very, very slippery), we did chase a fair number of runners into the next section, where the stumblers just before the final obstacles made quick work of them. Perhaps our finest kill was that of a runner dressed as Alice from the Resident Evil movies. She had a good costume: the red dress from the first movie, and she'd dyed her hair blond...the only problem was that Meg, as you can tell from the photos, was dressed up as a 'zombie' Alice, so we couldn't let a living Alice get by. I scattered her shield (many runners who'd lost all of their flags ended up serving as blockers, keeping the zombies from the living members of their group) and Meg chased her the whole length of our zone, and when she narrowly escaped (you can see Meg's stomp of frustration in the video), I took up the chase and got her just as she hit the next section. Other runners were far luckier, like the one girl whose flag came part-way off her belt before it slipped from my fingers, but it was enough that she'd heard the flag tearing and thought she was done for. We cobbled together a video with some still shots and some of the footage from our GoPro (a second video, of our trip through the course, will follow later this week):
Click to viewWhile we had a blast, and I hope most of the runners did too, some of the runners took things way too seriously...the attempting to block with your arms I get, since it is an instinctive reaction, but holding the flags, rolling them up so they weren't visible, or tying them to the flag belt, and then getting angry when a zombie tried to take your flags (there was some verbal abuse) is just poor sportsmanship. Granted, I've been on both sides of the fence now, and some (a very small fraction of the overall total) of the zombies at the Butler, PA, event were way too aggressive and definitely violated the 'no-touch' rules (Meg got bear-hugged at the Darlington, MD, event in October last year), so I don't doubt that there were some issues with zombies on our course. I just hope that we didn't cause anyone too much grief. Meg ended up taking an elbow to the head - if you've watched the video you know it was an accident, since the girl stopped to make sure everyone was ok, but I'm sure it hurt like hell.
The best runners were the one who were clearly there to have fun. They screamed, they shrieked, they jumped, they twisted, and they dodged dramatically. One of my favourites was a guy with a stuffed Yoda on his back, who ran at us yelling "Force Push! Force Push!". There was also a sort of strange camaraderie between those of us who had GoPros...for all of the videos that are up on YouTube, there aren't that many from the zombie point-of-view...so the runners who had them seemed to smile at me as they went by, or maybe they were hoping I wasn't going to chase them (I had one girl hold her camera behind her back so she could film me as I chased her down, although I am not sure the footage will be all that useful...).
Once we got pulled off the course, we headed back into the "Safe Zone" to pick up our bags, participate in some photo ops with runners (if anyone out there has photos of us, we wouldn't mind getting a copy...), get our medals and Zombie Horde t-shirts, and then take the make-up off. I decided to keep most of mine on, and to do the course in my costume...perhaps this was a mistake, as I was already sore from sprinting for the better part of three hours, and as I found out, running 5k wearing combat boots, combat pants, a tactical vest, and a head mounted camera, while already physically exhausted, is really, really hard. And boots get really, really heavy once they're wet. Luckily, the water slide wasn't until near the end, and it was not nowhere near as big as the one on the Butler, PA, course (which was two levels, and the second pit was just a giant mud puddle), which meant that I only had to run the last 200 or so metres in wet gear. Pre and post race photos are below...(the course was not nearly as muddy as the one in Butler, PA, was).
My co-worker, on the right, is a much faster runner than either Meg or I are, and she took off, running the whole course in sub 35 minutes. Had she lived, she would have won a prize for her age group, but she died before she hit the Smoke House (as did I), although she thinks she lost her last flag when another runner pushed her in front the group she had found herself with in order to create a diversion...she said she was so cold that she didn't want to wait around to watch Meg and I finish (she was also fighting a cold, and plunging into muddy, cold water probably didn't help her too much), so we don't have an after picture of her.
Meg managed to survive right up until the last gauntlet right before the long haul up the road to the Water Slide, when the zombies in the gauntlet did exactly what we had done in the morning, broke apart her shield (namely, me) by forcing their way between us...had she made it through that choke point, she would have been fine, as we came off the slide at a shift change and there were very few zombies on the course at that point (plus, it had just started to rain, and I think some people were running for cover)
We changed (it was raining, so we weren't entirely dry by the time we finished changing), packed up, and headed back north, with car heater on maximum, to hot showers, a hot meal (Vietnamese ginger chicken on rice noodles), and an early bed time. I think I packed it in around 21h00, and I have no memory of when Meg joined me, so I must have been dead to the world...by the time I woke up on Sunday morning my arms and legs were so stiff I could hardly move, and it was a long, long drive home...
All in all, it was an amazing weekend! While Meg and I had both participated as runners in earlier events, being on the course as a zombie was an awesome experience, and it is definitely one we are going to do again. Not sure if Reed Street Productions is bringing RFYL back to Canada next year (just a note, guys...if you do run an event in Canada next year, do it earlier in the year when it isn't so cold!), but we are so going to be in New York next August!
***** UPDATE - September 25, 2012 *****
We finally got around to editing our runner point-of-view footage. The video is below!
***** UPDATE - September 30, 2012 *****
I went back and put together some additional footage from the zombie point-of-view to make a third video. In doing so, I chopped out our opening photo montage, added a lot more of the chase scenes, flag snatches, etc., and opted not to add a soundtrack (it is fun listening to the runners scream). I also tried to identify the runners that had GoPro cameras (there were quite a few!). So, for your viewing enjoyment: