If you want to run your first marathon in your 50s, it helps to be chased by zombies | games

AWhen I was 56, running my first marathon, an old, fat, balding father, surrounded by millennials in body-hugging Lycra and smiles that looked like they were the product of artificial intelligence. But I’m ahead of them. Because they’re just competing for positions and personal bests, and I’m being chased by zombies.

The black dog of depression hit me around the time of my last birthday. I haven’t felt like I’ve achieved anything notable in forever. I used to exercise, but for many years, work kept getting in the way. I decided to kill two corpse-sniffing vultures with one stone and run my first marathon.

I started out with the audiobooks, but when Ben Elton’s autobiography became a bit grouchy, I remembered Zombies, Run! – An interactive running game for smartphones that was released years ago. That became my running companion.

You start out in the ruins of a downed helicopter, the voice in your ears trying to guide you to safety through the rows of the undead. Interactivity comes through short sections where you’re asked to sprint rather than sprint. This is a challenge because running fast is on the list of things you can’t or won’t do in your mid-50s, along with sleeping through the night without getting up to pee, waiting in line at the amusement park and anything to do with kale.

It’s a well-made audio adventure. The voice acting is great, especially Phil Nightingale as Sam Yao, the “operator.” His delivery is an Alan Rickman-like stuttering hyper-realism, which helps immerse you in the action – which is key to the success of a game like this, as it tries to make you forget you’re doing a fitness workout. As you run, you pick up or lose items and resources: some are important to the story, others can be used to build your base on the mobile app.

I do the Hal Higdon Marathon Training Program for Beginners, which includes three “short” runs during the week and a “long” on the weekends. Distances increase slowly over 18 weeks. For the first few weeks, I run three or four miles during the week, and six to 10 miles on the weekend. At these distances, the game works perfectly.

Unfortunately, I spent the 1990s playing football with a hangover and Red Bull without ever stretching once. My glutes and hamstrings give me constant pain after a 10k, and the story is no longer enough to distract me. Fortunately, the best thing about Zombies is Run! is that you can link the game to a playlist on your phone, so you get a minute of narration, and then the music fades out a bit before returning to the story. This is where the second part of my gaming training came into play.

Genesis is a fantastic EP of Myths and Monsters, using a Game Boy-style sequencer to control the Sega Mega Drive sound chips, resulting in wonderfully bouncy techno music with a gritty analogue sound. When this EP started after the exciting zombie cut scene, I truly felt like I was in a video game: Sonic the Zombie Escaper. I’ve strategically placed this collection of tunes on my race day playlist.

With zombies on my back and banging tones in the 170 BPM range in my ears, I tore and broke my PB for a 1K, 5K, 10K, and half marathon while my group of friends who survived the apocalypse investigated an alien ship and rescued a group of kids from a zombie-infested playground.

Then, at 15 of the 26 miles…my phone died.

Suddenly, there was no distracting zombie story and no inspiring music. The various demands of GPS trackers, music, and games drained 80% of my iPhone’s battery to zero in less than three hours.

Now I was alone.

Every part of my body started to hurt, my heart rate was hitting 170, I felt like I was going to throw up, the racing terrain changed from flat to hilly, and it became ten times harder, like going from empty space to underground caverns when playing the old arcade game Scramble.

I had three bouts of laser eye surgery a few years ago due to a tear in my left eye’s retina. The pain of that was biblical. I still suffer from PTSD. But those surgeries were five-minute slices of horror, and this was hours of running around with Satan stabbing me in the ass while his demons poked my legs, knees, and groin with forks. I can’t even remember my thoughts during this torture.

You’ve got the tour. recently. But he wasn’t Sonic the Hedgehog. It was like Death Stranding, where your character carries all of Swindon on his back.

I ran the first half in 2 hours and 10 minutes and the second half in three and a half hours. Now I have to train for another one so I can try to beat five hours – because that’s what idiots like me do. Fortunately, zombies, run! It’s now into Season 11, and I only managed to get through the end of Season 2.

Training for games makes sense, because what is a marathon but a very long, boring RPG where you grind out stats in health, dexterity, speed, and stamina before beating the final boss at the finish line? Forget Elder Scrolls, I’m here for Elder Strolls. And perhaps some half-dead redemption.