Race Report: Run For Your Lives

That's me and my friend Patti (we go way back...seriously, we met in high school; she's one of my oldest friends). Thanks to her I have SO MANY race photos! I normally only have a before and after, but this time she brought along two waterproof disposable cameras. Wait until you see them!!!
For starters my outfit. My kids did my shirt!!

 

The shirt is the one I wore for the Color Run - I couldn't get the one blue spot out so I figured might as well paint it up. Kids had a blast with it too. The bandana and red arm warmers are from the Warrior Dash I ran in May. I picked the BEST pants to wear too! Water just ran off of them (some still got through, but hardly any compared to Patti and Tabitha's pants). My Sister snapped this before I left the house - I look so mean!

Anyway, I had so much fun at this race! Driving there was a bit of a pain because it took so long (an hour and a half); didn't have a lot of traffic so that was good. I did pay $3 toll each way and $10 parking at the actual race. We parked really easily. Stood in a line and got on some shuttles to take us to the race site (thankfully went fast and smoothly). Once there the lines for picking up packets and such moved quickly. The baggage check line was NOT fun. It took us a good 30 minutes to check our bags. We killed the rest of the time waiting for our race to start just checking out all the other people running through some obstacles and the zombies. Here's Tabitha and me before hand...

 These zombies had AWESOME costumes and makeup!

 

Waiting to start our wave. You pick a tunnel to enter and then you wait until they open the gate at the other end to start the race. They release the tunnels separately: 1st the Appetizer, then the Entree, and then the Desert. We went ahead and were Appetizers! I hate waiting around...

Standing at the gate waiting for them to open it so we can get this thing started!!

The obstacles at this race were a ton of fun. They had some hills...check this bad boy out!

 Some mud!

 Walls to jump over. I tried to walk around the first one of these we came up on and Tabitha said, "If I'm pregnant and doing these you'd better do them too!" Me: "FINE!" Ha, ha. They were actually a lot easier to get over then I was expecting and I found myself looking forward to them. See! It just goes to show that you never know unless you try.

 Mud pits to climb up and over...

 more hills to run (bear walk is more like it). Shortly after this hill a big group of us went the wrong way and had to turn around. Nothing like an extra 1/4 mile or so tacked on to a race. Ha, ha.

One other annoying thing about this race - at the top of the above hill was a water station. Large jugs of water (the big blue ones that go on water coolers) and a bunch of cups. It was water station number 2 of 2. Nothing like huffing and puffing up a hill and then trying to lift those water things up enough to pour water. UGH!
Barbed wire to crawl under...

 There's Patti smiling about it and Tabitha walking out...

 Getting ready to enter the lake. YES, I said lake and it was FREEZING!!!

There were spots where my feet didn't touch. Here I am taking Patti's pic while she takes mine...ha, ha. We did that a lot.

And, yes, the photo I saw posted on so many other Run For Your Lives races was there. Patti and I going down together (no zoom on disposables)!

 Heaving myself out)

 Going under the electrical fence at the very end.

The zombies - some of them were pretty cool. Here are some pics. I'm protecting Tabitha in this one. She had one flag left. Me, I didn't make it very far. There were "zones" that had zombies. You're given three flags at the beginning. My third flag was taken in zone 3. The only flag I remember losing was zone 2 when a male zombie wearing a sparkly gold bikini snatched it - I was so busy laughing my ass off that I didn't even care. I think there were 12 zones. I had zombies give me flags and I lost those as well. Even Patti gave me some flags, and yep, lost those as well. Ha, ha, ha.

 Some of the zombies were pretty fast. Good thing we did some sprint training beforehand!

 

I had one guy jump in the bushes when he came up on me because he thought I was a zombie. Ha, ha. Guess I did a good job on my costume. There were a handful of zombies that, in my opinion, were too aggressive - one seriously dug their claws into Tabitha's belly (and yes, she's pregnant) -looked like she was trying to rip her shirt off. Another was shoving people into the lake (yes, she was literally pushing people in. I look at that as a big safety issue some people can't swim, some people didn't want to go in...can't blame them it was really cold). If you didn't jump in she was ripping your flags off while you stood there waiting in line to enter. She was a capitol B. In fact Tabitha had problems with the lake (it was so cold she literally felt like she couldn't breath) and they gave you an option to walk around the lake. I circled around when the medics released Tabitha and we walked around the lake together - the zombie in blue, yea, she followed me and ripped off the one flag I'd just gotten. Seriously?!
Tabitha and me walking around the lake.

Here are some photos from the end...

 

 Like my muddy handprint on Patti's shoulder?!

Overall I thought it was a fun race to run. My biggest complaint of all - lack of after race options. They had beer. No water. No bananas. No coffee (it was so cold out, coffee would've been great). Oh they had stuff if you wanted to pay for it; however it took us forever to get our bags since the baggage check line was HUGE that by then we were ready to just leave. Leaving the parking lot was not much better. Lines were super long. I got lucky and followed two cars who were driving out the entrance roads (not marked that way though). They ended up directing us (there were about 10 of us total) out the bus lane. We avoided a huge wait leaving the parking lot that I read on facebook lasted over an hour as the day wore on.
Besides all that I thought it was a fun race to run. The course itself was challenging and well planned out, and I'm pretty sure I'd do it again. In fact I'm sure that my husband is planning on it next year, and it would be a ton of fun to run it with him!!