Fun runs have been sprouting in every corner of the Philippines for many different causes.
Some aim to save the Pandas or Dolphins, while others are organized for someone with a terminal illness – all good causes, of course.
Motivation, however, is still a big problem as sometimes, the thought of doing good is not enough of an incentive, but what if the run had something more at stake? What if people had to run for their lives?
Picture running for five kilometres among five thousand other runners in a field covered with the walking dead, where the chance of enountering a zombie hungry for human flesh is ten steps to one and winning means living. That is the premise of Outbreak Manila. This month, The LaSallian brings you head to head with organizer, Deb Victa.
Dream Come Alive
Deb Victa, 20, a Mass Communications graduate of Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU), started this run with a dream. Victa mentions that her parents owned an events company in the past, which inspired her to put up her own company. Her partner, Angelo Cruz, is a web developer who trained in the United States. While he was staying there, a run called “Run for your Lives!”a three-month long zombie fun run that travelled state to state, inspired him to create: Re-Create Events and Production, with its very firstreak
“I put up this events company with my parents helping me in the background,” said Victa. “We set up a company, and we only patterned it after “Run for your Lives” in the States so the idea is not entirely original, it is only inspired after “Run for your Lives” in the States, but we added more twists to it to cater more to the horror tastes of the Filipinos.”
Re-Create Events and Productions has big goals with Outbreak Manila, aspiring for the outbreak to spread from Nuvali, Sta. Rosa. “We wanted to go with “Outbreak Philippines,” but it does not roll off the tongue. Kasi (Because) we got big dreams for this, we want to bring it all across the country,” said Victa.
The partners named their event “Outbreak Manila” to make the name flexible for changing especially when they have to move to another location. People from various parts of the Philippines are already clamoring to have an Outbreak in their own cities like “Outbreak Cebu” or “Outbreak Davao.”
Dealing with the Living
Victa and her team had to get legal in attaching the concept of zombie fun runs to their name as some other group may use their concept. “There might be a few runs that might be popping up here and there so we had the idea patented so the idea of a zombie fun run belongs to Re-Create. We had to make sure that that was part of the process,” she said. “In this day and age, it does not matter anymore who is first or who had the original idea. What matters is who was able to sell it better. So that is what we are aiming for.”
Outbreak Manila may not be the first one of its kind in the Philippines, but Victa and her team aspire to make their brand stand out from all the other runs in the future.
The hype that their zombie fun run generated was more than they had hoped for. Their sponsor had only wanted them to get at least 2000 participants, to which Victa was scared on whether they could reach that target.
As it turns out, during the very first three days of registration, they had signed more than 1600 runners. They had to open more slots that reached 3500 which then escalated to 5000. They wanted to keep 5000 as their maximum, but by popular demand, they had to re-open registrations.
On the Outbreak
Outbreak Manila, in many ways, is not the average fun run. Each runner is given a belt with three flags that symbolize their health status in the run. Zombies would try to take those flags away and whoever makes it out of the track with a flag intact, wins. The obstacles, Victa shares, are not the typical kind of obstacles in military base camps or teambuilding exercises. There would be obstacle courses that would make runners feel as though they were in a horror movie or a video game. She tells The LaSallian that a particular obstacle would make runners feel a genuine “The Walking Dead” experience.
The zombie fun run has been advertised throughout the social networking universe with their Facebook like page having over 19,000 likes. With billboards featuring Jake Cuenca to instructional accompaniment videos that feature the actual site of the outbreak, people are buzzing the grapevine with news, inviting friends to run for their lives.
Victa shares, “Personally, I was never into running. If I were to run, this is the type of run I would want to join. It’s a fresh trail, a fresh concept.”
Like most runs, Outbreak Manila has its own cause to advocate. “Our biggest beneficiary would be the runners themselves. This event is really more to get them to have an active lifestyle, so it is really for them; for them to have fun and also to get fit in an inspiring way,” she said.
So what could people expect from the actual outbreak? Victa shares that there would only be one route in the entire run, but somewhere in the middle, there would have lesser zombies, but would be longer by around 300 metres. The horde way would be very tight with a zombie encounter every ten steps. “What would make you want to go through the horde way is the obstacles because I do not know if you remember our mechanics, but we have life representing flag belts with three flags on it. If you lose those, you can actually replenish your stash if you go through the obstacles. So more obstacles means more chances to get flags,” she said. “The whole route, the whole 5K can be finished in an hour by way of walking, but why would you want to walk in a zombie infested obstacle course, right?”
