As a runner, I know exactly how I’ll survive the zombie apocalypse

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My friend recently purchased her dream cottage near a small town just outside of Toronto. It feels close enough to others for a sense of community, but far enough away from the big city to get a sense that you’ve escaped the masses. She invited a few of us up to spend a weekend, and obviously, we got to discussing the zombie apocalypse. Or the next pandemic, which shuts down all resources and drives us into wild hoards of zombielike have-nots. Same same. Most of my friends agreed that this would be the perfect place to come and hunker down and ride it out. I guess we were all assuming that we’d be on the guest list in this scenario – unfortunately, this friend has lots of friends, so I’m not sure we’d all make the cut. But thankfully we didn’t get down to the details of who’d be in and who’d be out. We just praised her on how wise and forethoughtful to invest in a place that you can both enjoy when times are good and escape to when society crumbles.

However, before we said cheers to that, I brought forth my opinion on how I’m investing in protecting myself from being the first to get eaten. Sure, if you’re outside of the main city, you might be able to avoid the zombies for a bit longer. But if I learned anything during the pandemic, it’s that spaces which you thought were remote very quickly become discovered and accessed by all. So, what to do? Find or create spaces for yourself that are more and more remote. And then what? Rely on your canned goods and ability to provide for only your clan while holding others off for … how long? No. That sounds stressful and no fun. My strategy and vision are different. I said, “I’m a survivor – I’m just going to start running.”

I have been investing in my physical and mental capabilities to endure for many years. You see, I am an endurance athlete. A long-distance runner mostly. That’s all I’ll need. No resources to fight over or protect – just my trained abilities to cover mile after mile on foot, sometimes under-fueled, while maintaining a positive outlook. I am quite sure that the zombie apocalypse survivors will not be the wealthy or those with the most cans or remote spaces or weapons. It will be the marathon runners. Luckily many of my best friends are runners, so I won’t have to worry about them. We’ll just run away – south probably because we tend to have low body fat and don’t love the cold – and we’ll be able to just keep going, with the odd surge thrown in when we need to outpace a zombie, and then we’ll be able to settle back to our regular pace, perfectly adapted to the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other. We’ll be quite adept at waking up at dawn to start again day after day. This is basically what we do every morning anyway.

In my vision, it will be my whole running crew together, as this obviously makes it more fun. But if we had to we could split up and cover some ground solo and then find each other again and share stories of our adventures on the go. My running group is comprised mostly of women in our 40s and 50s, and we know a thing or two about endurance and survival. We’d move, forage, snack, nap, move, repeat. We’d just run along, not leaving any place clean after we left, and not worrying about everyone else’s wants and needs and food and entertainment preferences – this is survival man, just one goal. So simple. We are all well practised at going to the bathroom in the woods. We’re not daunted by vomit, the inopportune escaping of other bodily fluids, or physical injuries – external or internal. We’ve all experienced long runs where we’ve run out of fuel and had no choice but to keep going on an empty tank. We’ve all thought we couldn’t go on and then kept going on. We’ve run through every weather condition possible, sometimes in combination. We’ve all endured dark moments, but known they would pass, and developed the patience and optimism to ride them out and not give in to them, believing that it might get better just around the next corner. And if it doesn’t, our best survival skill is that we know how to find humour in almost any scenario – we’ve laughed with each other through scarier situations than zombies.

Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t say no to a “just in case” cottage as well as the ability to run away. But if I had to bet my survival on just one method, I’d go with my marathon-trained capabilities. If you came to me for advice on how you too could prepare for the zombie apocalypse, I’d invite you to join my running group. Although we middle-aged women may not be the ones to repopulate the world, we’ll sure as hell make it into the most fun postapocalyptic version it can be.

Seanna Robinson lives in Toronto.