the zombie transformation begins from the ground up
Hello everyone! I'm reporting to you more-or-less alive from the scene of the aftermath of Saturday's Run For Your Lives 5k obstacle course involving hordes of the zombie undead here in sunny Colorado.
Alas, I myself was, er, 'recruited' into the zombie horde about three quarters of the way through the course, but I did finish the whole thing, so overall I count it a definite success. But the journey, now... that's where it got really interesting.
Stage Zero: Preparation
"It's only 5k," I thought. "I've run a 5k race before. I run 5k regularly for fun as a workout, although I'm not super fast. Still, I should be at least reasonably prepared for this, right?"
I was both right and wrong. So, so wrong.
The race itself was held on a motocross course in the foothills, not too far from Red Rocks, with a starting elevation at base close to 1,000 ft higher than Denver proper. In retrospect, I should have paid much more attention to those two facts, but at the time, I merrily ignored them.
My first real twinge of unease came two days before the race, when the organizers sent out a cheerful warning notice that some obstacles might involve electric shocks, but not to worry, because they'd have signs posted along the course.
"Um," I thought. "That doesn't sound good. That sounds downright dangerous, in fact, when you combine it with water-soaked clothing..."
I decided to continue anyway, but I took the precaution of adding a pair of sturdy work gloves to the rest of my race day gear (long running pants, running shoes with good traction, athletic sports bra, tank, and waterproof watch).
This would turn out to be one of the best planning decisions I have ever made.
Stage One: Arrival
Parking was a couple of miles down the road at the nearby speedway, which was good, as it was right off the highway and had plenty of room. The organizers had arranged school buses as shuttles and they were heading back and forth frequently enough that no one had to wait long. I arrived at 8 am and was on the bus by 8:15.
We arrived at the race site to check in and stow gear, at which point I noticed two things: one, there was a lot of rock and gravel and no sign of tree or grass or water, nor any shade other than under a few tents set up by the organizers, and two, the race route started off by going straight uphill all the way to the top of the motocross course.
...where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
--T.S. Eliot, 'The Waste Land.'
I'd signed up for the second wave (9:30 AM), because I wanted to get through before the sun got too vicious, and after taking one look at the course and the 'festival area' I was very glad I had. I didn't have too much time to look around, though, because by the time I got through picking up my packet and stowing my gear (including my own half-full water bottle), I had exactly 10 minutes to get to the start of the course and join my wave.
Stage Two: Run Like Hell
Everyone lined up in a corridor according their per-mile pace; I joined the 12-minute mile group, because I had decided early on I wasn't in this to set any personal records, but just to finish the course. The guards who released each group in a wave onto the course were dressed as soldiers from the Umbrella Corporation, with absolutely incredible attention to detail, and when they opened the gate, we all flooded out.
There weren't any zombies at first, but it didn't take us very long to discover that the course itself was enough of a problem to make up for that. I tried to set a decent pace for myself, and gave up the second I hit the first hill and my feet slid out from under me on the ridiculously steep grade that was comprised of a mix of loose gravel, loose dirt, and lots of dust. I lost count of how many people I saw by the end who had bloody scraped palms from falls and slides, and have never been so glad to have had a pair of gloves in my life. Even on the flats, the terrain underfoot was extremely treacherous -- that is, where it wasn't asphalt flats baking with heat in the sun.
Non-zombie actual obstacles in order as I remember them were:
1) Barbed wire coils, complete with real barbs - you had to go under either 2 or 3 of these.
2) Fences - about 4 feet high, 2 of them in succession.
3) Water slide over a plastic tarp down a steep hill
4) Mud + water pit at the base of the water slide, about 4 feet deep
5) Maze through a 'building,' complete with dead ends and zombies inside
6) Mud crawl on hands and knees under a series of long wooden fence point-arches
7) Hand-over-hand rope climb up an exceptionally steep slope (the gloves really helped with this)
8) Belly crawl through a smoke-filled box of a building under dangling live electric wires, which I discovered the hard way
9) Climb up a muddy hill and run through an outdoor 'shower'
10) Climb up a wooden ladder to about a 15 or 20-foot high platform...
11) ... followed by water slide #2 into muddy water box #2, again about 4 feet deep, then climb over the 5-foot high wall OUT of said box, and finally
12) Belly crawl under an electrified chain link fence and sprint to the finish line.
All of these were interspersed with waves of zombies that one had to dash and dodge through. I think they reported about 750 people served as zombies over the course of the day! There were zombies everywhere -- on the flats, on the hills (that was awful), around the rises and falls of hills, just all over the place.
I made it past the eighth obstacle before I lost my final 'life' flag to a zombie who must have played point guard on a college basketball team before her undeath, but it was such fun to do that. Seriously, there was a giant crowd hanging out uncertainly before that zombie wave, because she was so fast, and finally I just moved to the front and dropped into my own long-ago basketball stance and we faced off. I came very close to making it past, but when she snagged the flag we all laughed, and I jogged down the rest of the hill between the remaining zombies trading high-fives all the way as I was welcomed to the horde.
(One of them even tried to give me a life back, but it lasted about 30 seconds before I was swarmed by the rest of everyone around -- still, nice gesture!)
The only thing about the course that made me really cranky -- well, aside from the lack of any water stations until a mile in -- was that the electric obstacles weren't posted, and they weren't mild. Their "warning" was to have a zombie say 'stay down.' I found out the hard way about the dangling wires by accidentally brushing one with my arm, and damn if those shocks didn't hurt. The fence at the end? You could hear it humming. One of the observers told me she saw that everyone who hit it stopped frozen for a second before they moved again. Yikes.
Stage Three: Counting the Cost
At the end of it all, I routed over to the zombie exit gate, had my timing chip removed, received my finisher's medal, and staggered off the course to the festival area to find water, a place to rinse off the mud, and a place to change clothes and look myself over.
Only there wasn't any water anywhere that I saw, so I'm very glad I had my own bottle still at gear check. The line for the 'showers' was easily a quarter-mile long, so I gave up on that idea too and just scraped off as much of the mud as I could before catching the bus back to my car and heading home. (I wasn't too successful at that, based on
agonistes's reaction when she saw me!)
Injury-wise, I made it out okay, especially compared to all the people with bloody hands and the three that I saw who had to be carted off the course. I ended up with a scraped knee, a bruise on my arm where the shock hit (wtf), a bruise on my hip, a series of bruises all down my left shin, and a left elbow that I hit so hard that three days later the bruise is still spreading up my arm in both directions. I'm okay with that, because it happened when I caught my hip on a slick spot on the first water slide, spun around, and tumbled hard the rest of the way down, landing in the mud pit flat on my back and whacking my arm on the end of the slide. Still, far better my elbow than my head!
The other note on that score is that I appear to have also managed to injure my toe somehow (including cutting it on a rock, I think, because I was pouring rocks out of that shoe) to the point where it got infected between then and now, which led to adventures at the doctor's today and the excitement of a course of antibiotics over the next week. Hopefully they'll knock out the virus before it gets a tight grip.
But if I end up a zombie for real, this is how it all started.
In conclusion, I did have a lot of fun, and I'm glad I did it.
Would I do it again?
Probably not here in Colorado; we've got a lot of other races I'd rather run.
But ask me next year anyway.
This entry was originally posted at http://silveraspen.dreamwidth.org/278644.html and mirrored to LJ. Please comment where you wish! (There are
comments currently posted at Dreamwidth.)
Alas, I myself was, er, 'recruited' into the zombie horde about three quarters of the way through the course, but I did finish the whole thing, so overall I count it a definite success. But the journey, now... that's where it got really interesting.
Stage Zero: Preparation
"It's only 5k," I thought. "I've run a 5k race before. I run 5k regularly for fun as a workout, although I'm not super fast. Still, I should be at least reasonably prepared for this, right?"
I was both right and wrong. So, so wrong.
The race itself was held on a motocross course in the foothills, not too far from Red Rocks, with a starting elevation at base close to 1,000 ft higher than Denver proper. In retrospect, I should have paid much more attention to those two facts, but at the time, I merrily ignored them.
My first real twinge of unease came two days before the race, when the organizers sent out a cheerful warning notice that some obstacles might involve electric shocks, but not to worry, because they'd have signs posted along the course.
"Um," I thought. "That doesn't sound good. That sounds downright dangerous, in fact, when you combine it with water-soaked clothing..."
I decided to continue anyway, but I took the precaution of adding a pair of sturdy work gloves to the rest of my race day gear (long running pants, running shoes with good traction, athletic sports bra, tank, and waterproof watch).
This would turn out to be one of the best planning decisions I have ever made.
Stage One: Arrival
Parking was a couple of miles down the road at the nearby speedway, which was good, as it was right off the highway and had plenty of room. The organizers had arranged school buses as shuttles and they were heading back and forth frequently enough that no one had to wait long. I arrived at 8 am and was on the bus by 8:15.
We arrived at the race site to check in and stow gear, at which point I noticed two things: one, there was a lot of rock and gravel and no sign of tree or grass or water, nor any shade other than under a few tents set up by the organizers, and two, the race route started off by going straight uphill all the way to the top of the motocross course.
...where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
--T.S. Eliot, 'The Waste Land.'
I'd signed up for the second wave (9:30 AM), because I wanted to get through before the sun got too vicious, and after taking one look at the course and the 'festival area' I was very glad I had. I didn't have too much time to look around, though, because by the time I got through picking up my packet and stowing my gear (including my own half-full water bottle), I had exactly 10 minutes to get to the start of the course and join my wave.
Stage Two: Run Like Hell
Everyone lined up in a corridor according their per-mile pace; I joined the 12-minute mile group, because I had decided early on I wasn't in this to set any personal records, but just to finish the course. The guards who released each group in a wave onto the course were dressed as soldiers from the Umbrella Corporation, with absolutely incredible attention to detail, and when they opened the gate, we all flooded out.
There weren't any zombies at first, but it didn't take us very long to discover that the course itself was enough of a problem to make up for that. I tried to set a decent pace for myself, and gave up the second I hit the first hill and my feet slid out from under me on the ridiculously steep grade that was comprised of a mix of loose gravel, loose dirt, and lots of dust. I lost count of how many people I saw by the end who had bloody scraped palms from falls and slides, and have never been so glad to have had a pair of gloves in my life. Even on the flats, the terrain underfoot was extremely treacherous -- that is, where it wasn't asphalt flats baking with heat in the sun.
Non-zombie actual obstacles in order as I remember them were:
1) Barbed wire coils, complete with real barbs - you had to go under either 2 or 3 of these.
2) Fences - about 4 feet high, 2 of them in succession.
3) Water slide over a plastic tarp down a steep hill
4) Mud + water pit at the base of the water slide, about 4 feet deep
5) Maze through a 'building,' complete with dead ends and zombies inside
6) Mud crawl on hands and knees under a series of long wooden fence point-arches
7) Hand-over-hand rope climb up an exceptionally steep slope (the gloves really helped with this)
8) Belly crawl through a smoke-filled box of a building under dangling live electric wires, which I discovered the hard way
9) Climb up a muddy hill and run through an outdoor 'shower'
10) Climb up a wooden ladder to about a 15 or 20-foot high platform...
11) ... followed by water slide #2 into muddy water box #2, again about 4 feet deep, then climb over the 5-foot high wall OUT of said box, and finally
12) Belly crawl under an electrified chain link fence and sprint to the finish line.
All of these were interspersed with waves of zombies that one had to dash and dodge through. I think they reported about 750 people served as zombies over the course of the day! There were zombies everywhere -- on the flats, on the hills (that was awful), around the rises and falls of hills, just all over the place.
I made it past the eighth obstacle before I lost my final 'life' flag to a zombie who must have played point guard on a college basketball team before her undeath, but it was such fun to do that. Seriously, there was a giant crowd hanging out uncertainly before that zombie wave, because she was so fast, and finally I just moved to the front and dropped into my own long-ago basketball stance and we faced off. I came very close to making it past, but when she snagged the flag we all laughed, and I jogged down the rest of the hill between the remaining zombies trading high-fives all the way as I was welcomed to the horde.
(One of them even tried to give me a life back, but it lasted about 30 seconds before I was swarmed by the rest of everyone around -- still, nice gesture!)
The only thing about the course that made me really cranky -- well, aside from the lack of any water stations until a mile in -- was that the electric obstacles weren't posted, and they weren't mild. Their "warning" was to have a zombie say 'stay down.' I found out the hard way about the dangling wires by accidentally brushing one with my arm, and damn if those shocks didn't hurt. The fence at the end? You could hear it humming. One of the observers told me she saw that everyone who hit it stopped frozen for a second before they moved again. Yikes.
Stage Three: Counting the Cost
At the end of it all, I routed over to the zombie exit gate, had my timing chip removed, received my finisher's medal, and staggered off the course to the festival area to find water, a place to rinse off the mud, and a place to change clothes and look myself over.
Only there wasn't any water anywhere that I saw, so I'm very glad I had my own bottle still at gear check. The line for the 'showers' was easily a quarter-mile long, so I gave up on that idea too and just scraped off as much of the mud as I could before catching the bus back to my car and heading home. (I wasn't too successful at that, based on
agonistes's reaction when she saw me!)
Injury-wise, I made it out okay, especially compared to all the people with bloody hands and the three that I saw who had to be carted off the course. I ended up with a scraped knee, a bruise on my arm where the shock hit (wtf), a bruise on my hip, a series of bruises all down my left shin, and a left elbow that I hit so hard that three days later the bruise is still spreading up my arm in both directions. I'm okay with that, because it happened when I caught my hip on a slick spot on the first water slide, spun around, and tumbled hard the rest of the way down, landing in the mud pit flat on my back and whacking my arm on the end of the slide. Still, far better my elbow than my head!
The other note on that score is that I appear to have also managed to injure my toe somehow (including cutting it on a rock, I think, because I was pouring rocks out of that shoe) to the point where it got infected between then and now, which led to adventures at the doctor's today and the excitement of a course of antibiotics over the next week. Hopefully they'll knock out the virus before it gets a tight grip.
But if I end up a zombie for real, this is how it all started.
In conclusion, I did have a lot of fun, and I'm glad I did it.
Would I do it again?
Probably not here in Colorado; we've got a lot of other races I'd rather run.
But ask me next year anyway.
This entry was originally posted at http://silveraspen.dreamwidth.org/278644.html and mirrored to LJ. Please comment where you wish! (There are
comments currently posted at Dreamwidth.)