Run For Your Lives 5K...

A year ago, my dear friend Jay saw this race and emailed me the link saying "How did we not know about this??!". By the time he had found it, it was sold out. So - we promptly signed up for the 2012 race. When you sign up for this race, you have the option to sign up as a runner or as a zombie. We of course signed up as zombies thinking what a fun thing to do close to Halloween! We had the option of running the race before or after our zombie shift, which I had actually planned to do but that was pre-brain explosion. Anywhoo, as we got closer to the day Jay realized he had a conflict now with a show he was performing in. My lil bro promptly volunteered. Jay went through the necessary arrangements to switch over everything to Shane and even though I was super bummed Jay couldn’t do it with me, I was more than thrilled that Shane would! Last week Shane and I hit a thrift store and bought some clothes we could ruin (I was opting for a prom dress but couldn’t find my size so chose a house coat dress instead. Shane got a suit) and spent around $5. The day arrived, and Shane had a prior morning engagement that was lasting much longer than I had hoped, causing me to slightly panic about being late. We were the last zombie shift starting at 2:30 but had to be there at noon to be properly zombie-fied. And it was in Temecula. We hit the road at 11, hit tons of traffic, got lost due to wrong directions from the Run For Your Lives folks, and my bladder was about to explode. We finally arrive. Unfortunately the organizational side of this was an absolute disaster. First the wrong directions, then we were told we would have free parking in a special lot for zombies. We arrive, we didn’t get charged the $10 to park but the dude pointed us in a direction and said go. We drove and drove and had no idea where to park. We finally pulled over and some gal working camping check in (You could camp if you wanted to) said to park anywhere, as she had no idea. Awesome. As we were gathering our stuff, a fellow zombie was walking past us. Shane stopped her and asked if we were in the right spot. She said be prepared to walk a mile to where the race is, the admin side is a mess but when you are working the race it's really fun. So, off we went. And holy hell, hiking to where the race was located was a challenge in of itself. Up hills, un even terrain, about a 20 minute walk. By the time we arrived we were sweaty and exhausted. We started wandering around trying to find where we were supposed to be. Barely any signage, everything looks the same. We get yelled at twice, finally we check in and are directed to the zombie tent. As we arrive we start to get excited and the anxiety of getting there starts to fade away. We get in a line of sorts and the 1st stop is the clothes shredding section. You hand them the clothes you are wearing or they give you some and it gets shredded. I was told to take off my dress, wear a robe so they could shred it. Pretty funny. Then we get in our make-up line. First stop is the gal who sprays a light base all over your face and neck. You have to hold your breath and smells weird. Then you go to the highlight chick. She sprays some really cold stuff all over, I think this was the black highlighted portion. Then we get to the splatter gal. She flicks yellow paint and blood on your face. Also does some touch ups. Then you get to the blood girl (I just realized I had all women - rock on!) The blood girl gives you your wounds. She loved Shane - since his head is shaved he got a nice big bloody one right on top! I also had to snap a photo of this guy whose beard they soaked with blood!!!

Then we go out of the tent and stand in line to get sprayed with mud (coming out of a paint sprayer) and the last stop is a dude with a bucket full of blood throws it on you. As shown here:

Then we hang out for awhile. So, Shane and I took pictures of our finished selves:

Rad huh? Oh then we had to look mean of course:

We waited for quite a while which was fine, we were getting a kick out of watching everyone. The only downfall was the blood and the mud made you wet and it wasn’t that warm out so I was starting to get a bit chilled. Here was the zombie chill zone:

Then it was time. Here is how it works FYI - As a runner, you have a belt of 3 red flags. As you run through the course zombies are scattered about (Not in the obstacles) and they can steal your flag. If you lose all 3 of your flags by the end of the race you are "dead". As zombies in zone 6, we pretty much were told only to take 1 flag, no intentional contact and don’t REALLY kill people. A fellow stood up on a truck and shouted at all the zombies giving us the rules, cheering us on, and since we were the last shift of zombies we got the last blood buckets thrown on us if we so desired:

After that we were split up into our zones. My heart dropped when he said we took a bus to ours. Oh hell, with all this motion sickies and dizziness I'd been having lately I worried. I explained to him my situation and he seemed annoyed. Shane comforted me and we sat in the front. Luckily I was ok, I could see the road as we drove and it wasn’t hairy. On our bus ride to our spot our mischievous bus driver had an idea. As we drove, the racers would pause to let the bus go by. He thought it would be hilarious to have zombies run out of the bus to the totally unsuspecting runners. We stopped. "First 4 rows go!" I actually stayed, not wanting to test fate with the motion stuff but out went Shane and a handful of other zombies. OH MY GOD was that hilarious! The look of pure fear and shock as the runners fled when the zombies came screaming out of the bus just made my entire day! Shane bounced back in the bus with a flag in his mouth and got a rousing cheer from everyone. HA HA HA HA HA! We did it one more time on the way, but didn’t grab any flags. Then we paused by a group of little kids and we all hung out the window roaring at them. We scared the bejesus out of them. I will never forget the little girls face. Yes. Pure awesomeness. We were then dropped off at our location, and the shift of zombies that were already there loaded on the bus as we loaded off. Our location was just around the corner from some moguls. Basically the runners would come around the corner to a huge open area and have to run through us. This turned out to be a trip! Here are some photos to give you sort of an idea:

Once we got a feel out of how it was going to play out, we fell into our grooves. Basically the runners got nailed the minute they rounded the corner. Shane and I were sort of in the middle. By the time they got to us they were either mortified there were more zombies, exhausted from running for their lives, laughing, crying, or all of the above. The last group of zombies we found out later were making people do cartwheels or dances to let them go by. Hilarious. The first group of our zombies were much more ruthless. Our group was more for the scare factor, but if they had 3 flags we went for them. Shane was the more subtle stumble up on you zombie. I of course decided running straight at the runners was the funniest for me. I never really went for their flags but acted like I was. I loved loved loved scaring them! There was this one guy in our group who screamed like the Vampires in 30 Days of Night. F-ing brilliant. He scared the hell out of people all the time. The runners were a variety. We of course had the lame people that were jerks, that bitched that this was unfair or were annoyed. We also had the cheaters - people had picked up other flags and had more than 3! Or they had them rolled up so you couldn’t grab them off their belt. Lame. But the good thing is they were the minority. Most people were awesome. The would squeal and try to jump out of the way, there were obvious flag football guys that would do these awesome turn/twists to avoid the zombies, the swearing and laughing and screaming from the runners was fantastic and you could tell it was all in good fun. If someone stopped to rest or doubled over trying to catch their breath we let them be. Shane would sometimes hover over them making them laugh through trying to catch their breath but we never took their flags or scared them. I mean come on - poor people! ha ha ha! We would have lulls, where we could grab some water or eat the little bag of chips they dropped off for us then back to chasing. Another downfall is the race needed more course officials/volunteers. We had 3 situations where a medic was needed and one time it took almost half hour for one to get out there. I said to one of my zombie buddies - "I hope no one has a heart attack! They would die!" We were kind of out in the middle of nowhere and I have a feeling we were the farthest from the start/finish. Our shift was 3 hours long, and it did get cold and late near the end. The zombies were fading. When a group of 5 people laughing and trotting through us said they thought they were the last group we were all glad. Shane and I took this quick shot to show off some of the flags we snatched:

The bus arrived and on we climbed. Then this guy tells us he has bad news. There is one chick walking at a snails pace that we still have to scare. Most of the zombies got off the bus, those of us including myself who were freezing and starting to get really really sore stayed. The zombies hid behind the bus then charged her when she rounded the corner. She didn’t even care! I wanted to really eat her. Anywhoo, back we went. We got dropped off at our zombie tent and Shane and I saw the aftermath and Shane took this shot which was hilarious:

Most of the zombies went straight to wash up. Shane and I went straight to check out. We had already decided we were going home as zombies. It was way too cold to wash off and change clothes so we figured we would just put towels on my seats and maybe scare drivers going home. We got our T-shirt, medal and beer tickets and headed over to the main area so we could get something to eat and Shane could have our beers. We parked it in the beer garden with 2 beers and nasty old hamburgers that cost me a fortune and ate and chatted as darkness rolled in.

What was fun, was a lot of people wanted to take their pictures with us because most of the zombies had cleaned off. We felt like celebrities for awhile then headed out. We both decided we would love to do it again next year, but we would do an earlier shift. I think we would have enjoyed the event a little more if it was daylight and not so cold. Plus the 20 mile long walk back to the car in the pitch black was not fun. What was fun was when people would see us and get startled. He he he! Still scaring. We got out relatively easy and headed home. We had a blast. We talked about the feedback we plan on giving the folks at Run For Your Lives regarding the lack of organization and needing more course folks and plan to do it again if they do it in SoCal. I love that Shane and I love to scare people so much! We came home and our proud mother was so excited to see us roll in the door as nasty zombies that she took pictures of us saying we made her so proud:

Yup, I think I know where the love of horror comes from! I certainly missed Jay but had an amazing time with Shane and forgot all of our troubles for the hours we were zombies!! The last picture is my favorite. Dammit I love Halloween time!!!