Running a Marathon in Your 50s: How Zombies, Run! Helped Me

The Unlikely Motivation

At 56, I am running my first marathon, an old, fat, bald dad surrounded by millennials in body-hugging Lycra and smiles that look AI-generated. But I am ahead of them. For they are only competing for positions and personal bests, and I am being chased by zombies.

The Power of Zombies, Run!

I started off accompanied by audiobooks, but when Ben Elton’s autobiography got a bit whiny, I remembered Zombies, Run! – an interactive running game for smartphones that came out years ago. That became my running companion.

How the Game Works

You start in the ruins of a shot-down chopper, with the voice in your ears trying to guide you to safety through the ranks of the undead. The interaction comes via short sections where you are told to run fast rather than lope.

Overcoming Challenges

Unfortunately, I spent the 90s playing football on hangovers and Red Bull without stretching once. My glutes and hamstrings give me constant pain after 10km, and the story is no longer enough to distract me.

The Impact of Music

Luckily, the best bit about Zombies, Run! is that you can link the game to a playlist on your phone, so you get a minute of narrative, then the music fades up for a bit before returning to the story.

The Marathon Experience

With Zombies on my back and banging tunes in the 170bpm range in my ears, I tore away, breaking my PB for 1km, 5km, 10km and half marathon as my band of apocalypse surviving chums and I investigated a weird ship and rescued a bunch of kids from an undead-strewn playground.

The Unexpected Twist

And then, at 15 out of 26 miles … my phone died. Suddenly, there was no distracting zombie story and no inspirational music.

The Conclusion

I got round. Eventually. But it was not Sonic the Hedgehog. It was more like Death Stranding, with your character carrying all of Swindon on his back.