Running and Riding

The Run for Your Lives aka Zombie Run was in Clermont, November 17th. Never being ones to let an opportunity to cosplay pass us by we suited up.

If you don't know who we are...then we...we can't be friends anymore.

The event was a good time, and resulted in some really memorable photos. They are all courtesy of my favorite foodie Dave Chestnut. His lovely wife Lindsay joined us for the race. We also met up with some other friends there as well, including triathlon training buddy extraordinaire, Dani and Megacon compatriots, Sarah and Daniel Dutton.

I'm beginning to notice a theme among my pics of Dave surrounded

 by kick-ass women. Dude's gotta tough life.

The organization and execution was extremely similar to the Warrior Dash. Check-in, etc was well-done. There was food, there was beer, there was music. What more could you want?

That said, I have to say I was really disappointed in the lack of obstacles. There were literally only a few. A couple of walls to hop over, one big sand hill, a couple of mud pits, a slide at the end, a couple of army crawls, and one blacked-out building-type structure that had dangling electric wires that provided a very mild shock. That's it. No real climbing walls, ropes, etc.

This is my new favorite picture of me. Hands down.

 But what they lacked in obstacles they did make up for in Zombies. There were a LOT of them. And they were very committed to their roles. Their costumes and make-up were well done. And the performances were outstanding....and creepy. I'll say it once again, there is no freakin' way I would have done this race at night. Some were stumblers and some were runners. The hard part was you couldn't tell which were which until you got close to them. It was definitely a great sprint workout.

By the end we were muddy and had a lot of laughs. Which is the point of these kinds of things, to us, at least. Dave, Lindsay and I even had a flag left at the end.Which means we survived. Go us!

Dave and his dirty girls.

Would I do this one again? If it was just Dave and I? No. We prefer the more obstacle-heavy races. But if a group of friends were doing it again? Definitely. It was a blast to use the group dynamic to try to get through the clusters of Zombies. To put it simply it, was just plain old fun.

And we, as always, got a kick out of people responding to the cosplay. Dave felt that half of the Zombies who "recognized" him cut him some slack for being Shaun. One, dressed as Shaun himself, even tried to hand him an extra flag. But the other half seemed to be gunning for him particularly because of it. 

And without further ado, my favorite group shot, complete with caption by Dave C.

Good times.

We rode the bikes to the event so that afterward we could attend a Concours Owner's Group get-together a little further north. My goodness, the roads are so much more fun once you get north of Orlando. (sigh)

Gratuitous me and my bike pic.

The Concours guys look just like the BMW guys. Mostly older, white, Docker-wearing types.

Suddenly. Concours'!

But that is where the similarities ended. Around the campfire they cussed, smoked, drank, stayed up late, told dirty jokes and the next morning drove way too fast on curvy (for FL) roads.

I have found my people.