A recap of last week’s Zombie Obstacle Challenge

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Zombies, zombies, everywhere

No wonder I was scared of Big Bird as a child… / Britin Cote

No wonder I was scared of Big Bird as a child… / Britin Cote

Author: Britin Cote

This just in: Regina invaded by a horde of Zombies. Their only targets? Fast runners.

No, it’s not Halloween yet. Put that cape away. It’s the best charity event ever created: the Zombie Obstacle Challenge. On Sept. 27, the undead were set loose on a 5 km course, and their mission was to capture their meals, and add them to the army of the undead.

Or, in other words, Regina citizens volunteered their Saturday and risked hypothermia in the chilling rain to be outfitted with special effect makeup to attempt to capture as many flags as possible from runners trying to survive. For the second year in a row, the Queen City Kinsman hosted the event and a horde of about ninety volunteers fulfilled various roles, besides that of rotting corpses, to raise money and donate the proceeds to various charities.

The humans, also referred to as “runners,” went out in waves that consisted of roughly ten people or two teams. Parked outside of the Kinsman’s club survival base, a school bus ominously waited to be filled with the next batch of victims and to deliver them to the starting point located at A.E Wilson Park.

Diana Hart, a second year volunteer, coordinated the runner’s, affectionately referring to them as “zombie chow.” Once loaded, the “deli meats” were sent off to their cruel fate or potential glory. The runners were outfitted with a belt holding numerous flags, while zombies were located around the course and at every obstacle. To ensure safety of all parties involved, the undead followed a rule that kept them at a five feet radius of each challenge.

Derek Yan, Director of Social Media, took a few minutes from the hectic event to talk to us about the inner workings of the challenge.

“It’s actually just over 5km.” Yan says. “It has different obstacles, so it’s got a climbing wall, there’s a balance beam, there’s an over-and-under tire that you have go through, and, of course, there’s a bunch of zombies along the way that make it a little harder. Volunteers had the option of going with either doing their own makeup to or to pay $25 to have FX Hollywood style makeup.”

The last few stolen weeks of summer were given back to us this September, but that all ended on Saturday when a bone chilling wind and rain set in for the duration of the event.

Yan tells us, “When you got zombies, you don’t want it to be all bright and sunny. You want it be dreary and droopy. I had hoped it wouldn’t be as hot as yesterday, but at the same time I feel it’s a little too cold.”

Indeed, it was too cold. Medics made the call to start pulling zombies off the course in fear that health issues would occur. Strategic planning was used to insure a rotation was used and that no runner would encounter a stretch without safe zones.

For anyone interested in volunteering in this fundraising event, or to test your own survival skills, you can contact the Zombie Obstacle Challenge through Facebook.

Now, let’s leave off with this thought: is our society’s influx of interest with the zombie apocalypse our way of laughing off our deep-seated fear that someday a health crisis will occur again on Black Death magnitude and that in our modern world we all become pitted against each other in hopes of survival as government as we know it collapse?

Just a thought.

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