My Greatest Achievement As an Athlete

In the early 2010s the obstacle course racing craze had no more enthusiastic participant than me. I know, I also can see what I look like. An important thing to note is that Obstacle course races have at most one competitive wave at 8am. There's two problems with that sentence.

The waves from 8:30 or so onward are merely to complete the race, most of the time.

From the moment my friend Marty, an actual runner, told me about these races where he would leap over a (fairly narrow) bed of low fire at the traditional end, I was sold. I jumped over a lot of fire between 2010 and 2015 or so.

The most memorable version had zombies.

In this version every runner (moseyer in my case) was assigned three flags on a plastic belt. There were people in zombie makeup along the route. In addition to the regular obstacles, there were Zombies trying to steal people's flags.

If you crossed the finish line with flags? You were alive.

If you had none? You were dead.

Want some more flags? Go over particularly grueling obstacles to get them.

As I headed down the course, I lost a flag or two and climbed cargo nets and such to get a few more.

Then I saw the damn cheerleader. A zombie who had been so prolific that she had MADE HERSELF POMPOMS out of the flags of my brethren. This could not stand. Seconds before she saw me, I made my gait even more pathetic than it had been. She waited where she was for me to amble to her. So she was in an assigned position.

When I got close to her, she leaned out into the path and grabbed for me.

So I stole a pompom and ran. Not a dignified run, a hell-for-leather, exerting-fat-lady-if-I-trip-I'm-going-to-end-up-on-YouTube run .

"You can't do that!" She cried after me, but sticking to her post.

"It's not technically against the ruuuuuuuuules." This is how lawyers will survive the apocalypse.

Half an hour later, I was approaching the finish line. There was a dumpster full of ice water where the truly desperate to live could swim for a final flag. Instead, I stuffed the pompom into the dumpster handle visible only to the incoming runner.

I crossed the finish line and was catching my breath when someone mentioned that all of a sudden everyone who was crossing the finish line was alive.

I never thought I would end up in that position, but this is how I saved humanity from the living dead.

You're welcome.