I’d like to thank the zombies.

Zombies. No, I’m not referring to the current Congress (which by the way is decimating the SNAP program. If you thought our country was in bad shape today, wait until you’ve got another million hungry, out-of-work men, women, and children populating the nation. Exactly where do you think dissidents come from? But I digress.)

Every once in a while, I need a vacation. From myself. I get so fed up with the same thoughts running through my head. Fed up with living at the behest of my ego. Shuddup already! And as I make my way toward my grave in the hope of dying young, I’ve realized that I have to get more exercise. But as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, I’m lazy lazy lazy, the last thing I want to do is train, and for various reasons (mostly its about bigots) I will never go to the gym ever again.

But let’s rewind the tape a bit…A couple of years ago I decided that I had to start running. I’d gone out, drank to black out, then puked up my guts, and ended up in the bed of one of my co-workers (she was similarly rather intoxicated). I got home at 3 in the morning. The next day I decided that things needed to change. When I got home from work I went for a short run. I ran on a trail near my house in tennis shoes. If you know how to spell shin splints then you know what I’m talking about. The following weekend I bought proper trail shoes and started running. And yeah, that first couple of weeks was nothing but agony. And I signed up for a few 5k races. Within a couple of months I’d run three 5ks, two were street courses and one was a trail run.

The trail run did something to me. It was on a beautiful fall morning in Massachusetts. Start time was 9 am and we went through some really nice land. I sprinted past mallard ducks, floating on a small pond, the trees ablaze with color, all of us under a cloudless blue sky. I did okay, ran somewhere around 29 minutes which was my target. But after the race I was sort of bummed out that I had gone careening past the scenery and wild life.

Last year I promised myself that I would run a 5k. But last year was something of a disaster and life kept getting in the way of all my plans. Beset by projects months behind schedule I never made it to a race.

This year, once again I decided to run a 5k but I was like, I hate running. I hate running with perky people who train, and wear bright colors, and seem obsessed with their times.

Until last weekend, when I drove past Run the Apocalypse in Cheshire, NH. I saw these out-of-shape guys, wearing black, running alongside the road, carrying pieces of wood. I thought, “I can run that kind of race.” In the background billows of smoke rose up from an obstacle course.

Sadly, I’ll have to wait until next year to Run the Apocalypse. But curiosity got the best of me and an internet search, looking for something like the race I’d seen, lead me to the Run For Your Lives 5K. I signed up, immediately, and called into the kitchen, “Honey, I’m running a zombie race next weekend.” She replied, “Huh?”

Saturday afternoon, I ran the Zombie race in Candia, NH.

Here’s why I liked the race: There is almost no way to train for it. I was sprinting through hordes of zombies and wanting to get past them retaining all my flags. A lot of the racers wore black. There were no timing chips. I encountered man made obstacles and didn’t care b/c I was worrying about finding enough energy to dodge zombies for 3 miles. The race is more like a hybrid game -- a cross between theater, flag football, and a 5K.

Here’s what bothered me about the race: I got really bummed out between mile 2 and 3 when a zombie snuck up behind me she took my third flag. The sound of Velcro tearing stays in your ears for a few days. It is the sound of loss of life. I wanted at least one water hazard somewhere along the course. The course was not clearly marked toward the end and I got a little lost. I lost my eyeglasses in the zombie blood bath (luckily recovered them later) but it sucked because I need my glasses to see so I was a smidge worried as I raced downhill toward the finish dodging zombies, hoping I didn’t trip and break my neck. As I slid under the chain link fence, it wasn’t until after I got electrocuted a couple of times that I realized there were live wires dangling from the fence. We all know how well water and electricity mix. Gzzzzst.

But. And more to the point, I was really happy at the end of the race even though I had not made it out with any flags. (The t-shirt, the finisher’s medal, and the free beer were inconsequential.)

I was on the course for about 40 minutes. And (if for some reason you’re still reading this) here is how I trained for the race:

Over the past month: I cut to size, split, and stacked 2 cords of wood. I mowed the lawn often (my lawn is about an acre in size and I use a push-mower). I went on a few hikes (the most recent one being Gap Mountain). I made a point of walking briskly for 1 mile each night when I got home from work. And that was it.

Saturday night, after all the usual Saturday night things were out of the way, around 11 pm the girlfriend and I are lying in bed, heading for sleep.

She: When you crossed the finish line I wanted to jump your bones. You were flushed and happy. I’ve never seen you like that before.

Me: I’m glad you waited until we got home.