Run for your lives 2013-11-17 Dade City, Florida [Part 4]

Conclusion and Credits - Part 4

About a month ago my services were requested for covering a very popular OCR event: Run for your lives 5k.  Race Pace Photos hired me to join their team of excellent photographers.  In this post, I will go over the equipment and other preparations for the event.  This is Part 4 of a four part post.

Fogginess on lens

As soon as I reached my home, I instantly went to save my lens from mold. I was lucky enough this time: all that was needed was an A/C environment in addition to some heat and desalination. The lens is working as expected, next time I'll pack a better plastic cover and fit it in my bag.

Executive Decision: Zone 8

While shooting Zone 8, there came a time that the zombies had to switch with new ones, since their shift was over. However, it seemed that we had too few zombies in the next shift, and there were quite a bit more on Zone 9. The morning shift was much more eventful. Therefore, for a brief period, I moved the zombies to Zone 9. Although this left a zone empty, it made Zone 9 a lot more challenging, and ultimately, fun!

Another decision I took was to provide flags to runners that were down to 1 or 0. Many runners were coming in bummed out and disconnected from the race because they lost too many flags from previous zones. To provide a challenge and excitement for the runners, I handed out some flags before the rope maze challenge. The runners became happy and grateful (apparently the previous zone was a little bit too rough) and the zombies were relieved that they got more runners to go after.

Lessons learned and Race improvements

I rather be over prepared than under prepared, the issue with the rain could have been easily prevented. Next time we also need to ask for ease of communication between photographers and the race directors. Internally, we can use cheap radios to get quick status updates as needed. Cell phone communication is spotty at best in these remote locations. In this race, the makeup either needs to last longer, or the photographers need to only act as zombies for the first 4 hours, and then retire into a more traditional spot.

Conclusion

I want to thank Human Movement for salvaging this event and making it happen. Without them and their loyal staff it would not have happened, be sure to check em out!