Over the chatter of runners mingling and the “Ghostbusters” theme song playing on the speaker, Anthony Sanchez gathered the crowd for the Gator Zombie 5K on Saturday morning.
The Inter-Residence Hall Association and the National Residence Hall Honorary hosted the race. The 100 participants wore flag football belts and ran for 3.1 miles from volunteers dressed as zombies, trying to steal their flags.
“It’s something different at UF,” said Sanchez, the IRHA president. “There are always 5Ks where it’s about how fast you can get there, but this one really is just about the experience.”
The creepy clown zombie, who looked like Pennywise from Stephen King’s novel “It,” would scare runners the most, the 21-year-old UF advertising senior said.
Chris Mann, 18, said he had been training for the race, which was his first 5K.
“You can train on a treadmill, but you can’t train for people trying to grab at you,” Mann, a UF freshman, said.
The registration fees for runners were $10 before the event and $15 on-site, which included a T-shirt. Gator Dining Services donated after-race snacks, and RecSports provided the flag football belts. The race cost about $1,000, he said. Proceeds from the race benefited the Cathie Ponikvar Memorial NRHH Scholarship, he said.
Sanchez said he hopes to make the event an annual tradition.
“We planned it three months ago to be around Halloween,” he said. “I think it just got more hype that way.”
Leeson Chen, a 21-year-old UF computer science sophomore, chases Isabelle Lady, a 20-year-old UF biology junior, as she finishes the last leg of the Gator Zombie 5K. Participants wore flag football belts as they ran while volunteer zombies chased them and tried to pull them off.
