I got to Tracy's house at 5am so we could leave for Maryland. It wasn't a bad drive, but we got a late start after Wawa took forever. The parking situation was in a muddy field and we had to catch the bus on the road near there to get to the race. It was very cold, but we weren't worried until we got on the bus and were told there was a backup of buses that had to travel one at a time down the small road to drop off racers.
With less than ten minutes until our heat time, we rushed through the packet pickup lines, checked our bags and then I realized that I needed my flags and Tracy didn't have her monitor. We met back at the starting line and got running about five minutes after everyone else.
I was still putting my belt on when I encountered the first field of zombies, allowing one of them to snag two of them with one hand. Not cool. So I was down to one flag at the very start. The race was through the woods, up some mild grades, and over bails of hay obstacles. The hardest part was sprinting full speed past fields of zombies so they couldn't steal my only flag.
I didn't even hesitate when it came time to jump in the water and cross. It got really deep at some parts. While running down some forest paths a zombie would pop out from behind a tree and try to grab me. I managed to avoid them somehow.
After a very large hill we came to The Gauntlet. There were tons of zombies and, much like the rest of the race, I was mostly by myself to get through them. I zigged, zagged, and spun my way through them all and got over and under the obstacles then dunked in the big pool of blood red that I needed to cross before the final wooded path run to the finish line. After ducking under a chain link fence that said "Safe Zone" I was done the race and they separated the dead from alive. I lived with one flag!
Tracy was waiting for me by the tents. She took a different path than I did. That's one of the interesting things about this race: you can go different ways and still end up at the end. We took our drink tickets and got a pretty crappy free beer and then perused the clothing tents and tried some salsa. There wasn't a lot to do there after the run. The bands didn't start until afternoon so we decided to get back on the shuttle and go.
I looked up a nearby brewery called DuClaw and we went there for lunch and drinks. I made a good choice because they had an amazing blackened tuna sandwich. Best I've ever had. They also had a ton of good beers I wanted to try...
So I did. I got the sampler of all of their beers on tap. So many amazing ones. Very different. One was made in whiskey barrels and had quite a kick to it. I was pretty loaded after drinking all of those. Not really drunk, but not very far from it. I wouldn't have let me drive. Luckily Tracy had the wheel so I was free to drink at my leisure. I wrote up a nice post for it at Beer Me That Blog.
Not very long after getting home we headed right back out to Philly to JD McGillicuddy's for some pre-show drinks and food. I got one Golden Monkey-yeahhh and some Old Bay fries that ended up being free because the waitress gave mine to the wrong person first.
We went into the Electric Factory a bit before New Found Glory came on. They opened up with a surprise and got into a set full of all kinds of songs. They played a few new ones, two of which are my favorite tracks. They played a few songs I didn't expect but skipped some I did.
The encore was the big surprise. They covered "Basket Case" by Green Day and added a nice little NFG-riff in there. It was a good cover followed by "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "My Friends Over You" of course.
It was a great show as always and a crazy fun day! From zombies to beer to New Found Glory. Can't complain about any of that.
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