Will Run For Flesh! (Zombie Transformations and Turning Humans)

In February of last year, the Dad and I signed up to be Zombies on October 27th at the Saturday RUN FOR YOUR LIVES race in Darlington, MD just north of Baltimore. The Dad was SUPER excited, which is why we signed up so early. I'm glad we did too because the zombie shifts are what sell out first from the race. They had so many people signing up and on the "wait list" they opened a second race day on Sunday. Which unfortunately was canceled by Howard County due to Hurricane Sandy.

One of the perks of being a zombie this year was a free race which we ran with a friend of the Dad in the 11 am wave. (All about my race recap here.) So we all started our zombie transformation with a freezing cold PVC pipe shower to rid ourselves off the thickest layer of mud and gross from the race. Refreshing.

Undead Only

Then it was back over to the Zombie Transformation Center, the ZTC, to change into our zombie costumes and get in line for make up. The Dad and I just pulled old clothes from our closets but our friends came prepared with scrubs. There were zombies dressed as doctors and nurses, prom queens and brides, a farmer, a few nuns, some in fatigues, and even Princess Leia.

We heard about one of the zones before us all dressed as a wedding: bride, groom, bridal party, officiant, and even a baker with a brain cake. So creative! Not only the zombies dress up, we saw some very creative racers as well. A banana, a panda, super heros, guys in tutus, but the best by far was the group of guys dressed as King Arthur and his sidekicks from Monty Python, complete with coconuts and galloping. I'm told they didn't break character through the whole race! I wish I had a camera while zombing.

Stumbler

Standing in line for make up, you can have parts of your zombie outfit shredded and even pick from their zombie wardrobe if you don't have your own zombie attire. After adding holes and shredding shirts and the bottoms of pants, we waited to move on to make-up. They brought in a team of professional make-up artists to help apply all the zombie faces. Some people had plastic wounds attached to their faces and neck, but none of our little group did. There were two separate make-up tracks, the stumblers and the chasers. Chasers, like the Dad, had a base coat and red accents and then blood splatter. Stumblers (this was me) received an airbrush base coat to dull and flatten out the face and then airbrushed contours around the eyes, cheeks, and mouth. Then it was on to spot splatter where they used a thick bristled brush and flicked the bristles towards my face so the make-up would splatter. And like the chasers, the stumblers had blood flecks and wounds added.

Chaser

After our faces were all made up, they hoisted a blue tarp between two trees and zombies lined up to be sprayed with light and dark mud and have handfuls of blood tossed on us. The guy tossing the blood seemed to be having a pretty good time pelting all of us with handfuls of goopy, red syrup. The blood looked really great against those zombies in white, especially the zombie brides.

Bloody and Gross!

I like how it looks like my hand is going to reach out and get you.

Even Zombies need love, right?

Since we were they last group of zombies for the day, and they had a bit of blood left over, before we headed out to our zones they had us stand in a big huddle and flung the remaining blood on the group as you would toss a bucket of water after washing your car. A poor lady in front of us got an eye full and finding a clean sleeve to wipe some away was harder then you might think.

Each zombie received two bottles of water and a bag of snacks for during our 3-3.5 hour shift. We were scheduled from 2:40 to 6, but being the last group we were out there until the last person finished through our section and I have no idea what time that was!

While in our zone, zone 12, our goal was to take as many final flags as we could. There were a few people who had more then one flag (I saw one guy with all 3 still,) but most people had one or none by the time the reached us. Those people in groups would try and protect their friends who still had flags and it was always great when you could grab one of those. Some people didn't want to play by the rules and would roll their flag around the flag belt, a few tied the flag to the belt and there were many who had shirts long enough that they hid all but the tiniest tip of the flag. Add on all the water and mud and those flags were hard to get! There was a lot of karate chopping while people tried to smack zombie hands away from their flags. One guy I tried to take a flag from swung his arms so violently he hit me in the face. I think he made my nose bleed, but with all the fake blood it was hard to tell. (He did apologize though, he didn't mean to hit me.)

By the end of the shift, I had pulled about 20 flags and felt quite accomplished as a zombie.

Cleaning the make-up off without running water wasn't happening. We were able to get the top layer or blood off, but all the flecks and most of the black around my eyes needed more scrubbing then I could do in the fading light and with a wet paper towel and baby wipes. (We looked great heading in to WaWa to grab a drink on our way out of town, haha. The cashier told us he had been busier then usual that evening and he didn't look at us that strangely so I'm sure he had seen a few other zombies before us.)

After stopping to get our free beer (well the guys got beers, not my thing so much,) our plan was to head out to a restaurant for dinner, looking all zombie-fab, but the bus line back to the parking lot was LONG. So the guys got a spot in line and we ladies went to the food vendors to get some hot food. They had a lot of choices and the prices were pretty reasonable. I was so hungry (lunch was a bag of goldfish crackers, I could have planned that better) and the cheeseburger and fries were delicious. I'm sure they weren't as wonderful as I remember, but it was just what I needed!

The bus line moved relatively quickly, they had a great system in place and plenty of buses to keep the line moving. It wasn't long after we finished eating that we got on the bus. Let me tell you sitting down on that bus was amazing. I didn't realize my legs were so tired!

In the days and week after we were all a bit sore, but we had such a great time and we are already thinking up some costumes for next year!