Finding motivation
So, what have I been doing recently? (Other than This Week of Oh My Fuck, which I will get into in a later post.) Well, several things really, but for those of you not on Facebook, the most entertaining thing I've been doing is Zombies, Run!
Yes, me. Going outside. And jogging. A sign of the end times, etc.
There are a lot of apps out there that "put zombies in your path" etc, but they force you to keep looking at your GPS while running, and that's pretty much all they do. This app is more of a hybrid between an audiobook and a LARP. You get sent on various missions, and between songs on your phone/ipod/whatever's playlist, the radio guy back at your base (who sounds unnervingly like Wheatley from Portal 2) will come in and tell you what's going on: zombies are surrounding the hospital you're trying to get supplies from, or there's a child stranded nearby in the wasteland you need to rescue, or something else that gives you a reason to keep moving and slowly fills you in on the story of the post-apocalyptic society you're supposedly in.
I recommend watching the video on their website, it explains the overall stuff rather better than I can for the most part. But one of the other things you can do is turn on the option for random zombie attacks interspersed in any given mission. At that point you have to increase your speed by a certain percentage for a certain amount of time (30-90 seconds) to evade them. If you don't, you have to jettison some of your hard-earned supplies to distract them and get away.
I've had the option turned on since the beginning, but today (Episode 4) was the first time it kicked off for me. Fox has run 6 or 7 missions and still never gotten one. Today I got THREE. What the hell, app? One of the things I DON'T like so far is that the percentage increase appears to be based on your base speed on the overall mission, not your actual speed at the time the attack kicks off. This meant that the first attack I evaded at a light jog, the second I held my own (it tells you if they are gaining or not) for about 45 seconds at a good run but then had to stop because I started dry-heaving. The third? Was right before we were about to get home so I was wiped, but I instinctively bolted anyway to somewhere between a jog and a sprint. Managed to keep it up for about 25-30 seconds before realizing A. despite this being the fastest I've gone the whole time and starting from the slowest base speed, the zombies were gaining on me the whole time, and B. whoops, I'm gonna puke again.
I didn't realize until I was in the shower later the exact circumstances & probable consequences of that last one. We were just passing by the high school near our house, so there were a lot of kids being dropped off by their parents right by us. At which point I randomly blurted "OH CRAP!", vaguely glanced behind me out of instinct, and bolted running down the street. Fox, since he knew what was going on, immediately took off with me.
I'm now imagining that crowd of high schoolers reacting like startled cats, trying to figure out what we were running from and whether to follow our lead. I laughed so hard I almost fell over in the shower.
EDIT: Oh good, it's not just me!
So yeah... that's what I'm doing, and while I still feel like a complete schlub and no doubt will do so for quite some time yet, I've already upped my average speed by 2 minutes per mile, and I'm not collapsing and dead at the end like I was at the start. Also, apparently I am getting tan like whoa.
I'll leave you with a video from one of my favorite series, because at 2:35 is where I got the quote in my icon from. But the first convo of the episode are pretty much the two sides of my brain arguing after each of the zombie chase intervals. XD
Yes, me. Going outside. And jogging. A sign of the end times, etc.
There are a lot of apps out there that "put zombies in your path" etc, but they force you to keep looking at your GPS while running, and that's pretty much all they do. This app is more of a hybrid between an audiobook and a LARP. You get sent on various missions, and between songs on your phone/ipod/whatever's playlist, the radio guy back at your base (who sounds unnervingly like Wheatley from Portal 2) will come in and tell you what's going on: zombies are surrounding the hospital you're trying to get supplies from, or there's a child stranded nearby in the wasteland you need to rescue, or something else that gives you a reason to keep moving and slowly fills you in on the story of the post-apocalyptic society you're supposedly in.
I recommend watching the video on their website, it explains the overall stuff rather better than I can for the most part. But one of the other things you can do is turn on the option for random zombie attacks interspersed in any given mission. At that point you have to increase your speed by a certain percentage for a certain amount of time (30-90 seconds) to evade them. If you don't, you have to jettison some of your hard-earned supplies to distract them and get away.
I've had the option turned on since the beginning, but today (Episode 4) was the first time it kicked off for me. Fox has run 6 or 7 missions and still never gotten one. Today I got THREE. What the hell, app? One of the things I DON'T like so far is that the percentage increase appears to be based on your base speed on the overall mission, not your actual speed at the time the attack kicks off. This meant that the first attack I evaded at a light jog, the second I held my own (it tells you if they are gaining or not) for about 45 seconds at a good run but then had to stop because I started dry-heaving. The third? Was right before we were about to get home so I was wiped, but I instinctively bolted anyway to somewhere between a jog and a sprint. Managed to keep it up for about 25-30 seconds before realizing A. despite this being the fastest I've gone the whole time and starting from the slowest base speed, the zombies were gaining on me the whole time, and B. whoops, I'm gonna puke again.
I didn't realize until I was in the shower later the exact circumstances & probable consequences of that last one. We were just passing by the high school near our house, so there were a lot of kids being dropped off by their parents right by us. At which point I randomly blurted "OH CRAP!", vaguely glanced behind me out of instinct, and bolted running down the street. Fox, since he knew what was going on, immediately took off with me.
I'm now imagining that crowd of high schoolers reacting like startled cats, trying to figure out what we were running from and whether to follow our lead. I laughed so hard I almost fell over in the shower.
EDIT: Oh good, it's not just me!
So yeah... that's what I'm doing, and while I still feel like a complete schlub and no doubt will do so for quite some time yet, I've already upped my average speed by 2 minutes per mile, and I'm not collapsing and dead at the end like I was at the start. Also, apparently I am getting tan like whoa.
I'll leave you with a video from one of my favorite series, because at 2:35 is where I got the quote in my icon from. But the first convo of the episode are pretty much the two sides of my brain arguing after each of the zombie chase intervals. XD
Click to view