We had so much fun running this race last year, that there was never any question about us doing it again this year. My only dilemma was that I thought I had a pretty good costume last year, and didn’t know how I could possibly come up with a better one for this year’s race. Kurt had already decided he was going to be a Domino’s delivery driver zombie.
The weekend before the race, Kurt and I were trying to come up with a costume idea for me. We were saying that a golfer or tennis player zombie could be pretty cool. We decided to stop at Goodwill to see if we could find anything that would work. Less than twenty minutes and $8 later, we were driving home with my complete costume.
Race morning, there are professional face painters available to do your zombie makeup if you’re willing to pay the extra fee.
We just do our own.
We could tell right away that Kurt’s costume was a big hit. EVERYBODY was pointing to and talking about the Domino’s guy.
One lady really liked my costume, though. She said her boyfriend is a big tennis player, and she thought my costume was great.
Several people asked to take our picture. We even posed with some humans.
It’s always fun checking out all the different costumes.
The race field is split up into “humans” and “zombies”. The humans are given a head start. Last year it was 90 seconds, this year it was cut to a more manageable (for the zombies!) 60 seconds. The humans all have red ribbons tied to their backs. The zombies try to catch up to and “kill” as many humans as they can by collecting the red ribbons from the human’s backs.
Last year a preacher gave a mock sermon at the start of the race, but this year there was just a mass count-down after the humans were released.
We knew from last year that if we didn’t take off sprinting, we wouldn’t catch any humans that were still alive. Kurt, however, was running stiff-legged like a zombie. I had to stop and wait for him to catch up. I guess he wasn’t very interested in making any kills.
We caught plenty of humans, but none of them still had ribbons.
We weren’t racing, but we were still working pretty hard. I was definitely sweaty and tired at the end.
I left my Garmin at home both years. The big watch just doesn’t go with a costume, and this is just a fun race, so I’m not really concerned with my time. The race is not 5k, though. The second year they did the race, they moved the finish line to the opposite end of the downtown mall (adding almost a half mile). They still call it a 5k. For a Halloween race, I think that’s just fine (even kind of cool!), but I do wish they’d acknowledge somewhere that it’s not 5k.
Even zombies need coffee.
Kurt won the best costume award!
I’ve already started thinking about my costume for next year.
The Running Nemophilist 