Last Saturday was the Night of the Running Dead 5K Race, finally. I say I hate running and I’m not kidding, but I do like running the 5k Races. I only have to run for 30 minutes and it’s over and it’s always like a party afterwards. This year I ran alone… that is if running alongside 350 humans and 950 zombies counts as being alone. However I was the only person that I knew in the race. Actually that’s not true either. I later found out there were a few other people I knew who ran the race but I didn’t see them while I was there. Anyway, the race was fun. This was the second year of the Undead 5k Race. I signed up last year but I ended up watching my kids and the kids we were fostering at the time rather than running.

This year I got to run! The event coordinators tried to break a world record of having the most zombies gathered together at once. They wanted to get at least 5,000 and they got… 1,000ish! Too bad for them, but they did it all wrong. I could have helped them with their organization. The 5K race, which had 950 zombies in it was at 3pm. The world record contest was at 1pm. This means if you wanted to run the race you had to get there 2 hours early. They also had a 1 mile creep/crawl at 2pm for all the kids and the people who just wanted to do a zombie walk. So you can guess where the world record contest should have been. Right before the 5k and right after the creep/crawl. This is when the most zombies were out. The creep/crawl would be about 30 minutes at the most (it was only a mile). Next year I’m sure they’ll have better coordination for this. Maybe they’ll ask me, I’m an amazingly proficient organizer…. if people would listen to me and follow my advice.

Let’s talk about the race. There were big glitches in the race, but overall it was a good time. This year the race was held at the Utah State State Fairgrounds. We ran around the parking lot and through the alleyways. There was a definite lack of organization with the track. So much so that two cars ended up parking on the course as we had to wait for them to be moved before we could start. Why were the cars able to get on the course to begin with? In the meantime, while we all waited for the cars to be moved I started talking with the person next to me who had those new running shoes with the toes cut out. I don’t like those shoes but I want to try them. Everyone I talk to insists they are so much better for running but they’re like $80 and they look like they’ll fall apart. They’re not good for anything else either. Right now when my running shoes aren’t good for running any longer I can still use them as my regular shoes, but not with those. Once they go bad they go to the garbage. The girl wearing the shoes insisted they have helped her knees and she can now run much further. This only caused me to want the shoes even more, but they still look stupid! Fortunately I have no money anyway so there’s no threat of me getting the shoes.

The race finally started, about 15 minutes late, and we all took off. I was in the first part of the pack and somehow they managed to put the slow people in a giant row across the track. People have to know when they’re not the fastest runner out there. Why do they get in the front of the race? Why do they insist on walking side by side and blocking the entire track? That is the most annoying thing about 5k races. It shouldn’t be about running around the other runners. The rules are clearly laid out. If you’re slow you need to get over to the side. It says that in all the documentation. But nobody follows that rule. It’s just like at my gym where the track plainly states for the slow people to go to the inner track, which only makes sense, but they all shift to the outer track where the people who want to run should go! You people are annoying.

Speaking of annoying, someone out there apparently decided that the tape that was marking the course was annoying in the way that it was blocking off part of the parking lot so they cut the tape. This led to the first 300ish people (myself included) running the wrong way and adding extra time to the race. The race people claim that it was only a tenth of a mile but I suspect it was closer to a quarter of a mile extra. It added about 2 minutes onto the run, which was the same time as the head-start that the survivors got on the zombies ( Let me take a moment to clarify: the course was a lap course. The plan was to run around twice. The cut in the tape led us back to the start, where the zombies were just starting out ). So, as we were passing the start line again we were also now running with the zombies, which meant even more slow people getting in my way. I really wanted to trip people, but instead I just focused on the ground and let my imagination take over. It’s fun to let my imagination control my thoughts while I run. You never know what’s going to happen and the run is over in no time if you do it right. We finally finished the race and my clock time was around 32 minutes. This means I came in around 30 minutes if you take off the extra time from the extra distance. The race coordinators managed to fix the course right near the beginning so it was only the first people that ran the extra distance. It’s not my best time ever, but I’m fine with it.

To sum this up, I’m definitely running the race next year and there’s no way I’ll be a zombie then also.