For Your Eyes Only. Or a few things I learned on my morning run.

"Goodbye Mr. Bond, I trust you had a pleasant... fright."

~Ernst Stavro Blofeld

OK, this post really isn't about James Bond. It's about running. Something I love to do.

I run with Zombies, Run! (ZR), a fitness/running app. (I talked about it back in 2014 in my post, Zombies, Run! Comes to Google Glass.) I've had my ups and downs with the app, both for technology reasons (What app doesn't occasionally get buggy with updates?) and content reasons (I personally like my zombie-themed fitness app to have actually zombies in it so I took exception to one of the seasons - you know who you are, bad, bad season!). But the folks who put together ZR have been on their game lately and I have been enjoying a most definite UP in running to Season 5.

The missions (as they are called) are usually named after song titles and Season 5, Mission 27 took it's name from a song from Bond. As in James Bond! Namely, For Your Eyes Only. (See? It makes sense now, right?!?)

I have no idea why this got me fired up for my run, but there it is.

Sure, For Your Eyes Only featured Carole Bouquet as Melina Havelock.

And Lynn-Holly Johnson as Bibi Dahl.

But neither of them is very zombie-like. So...

There was some running in For Your Eyes Only. But not in a significant way. But when I saw the title of the mission I got really excited. Maybe it just resonated with the 10-year-old me. The 10-year-old me really, really liked Lynn-Holly Johnson.

I decided a Bond-themed mission deserved a Bond-themed playlist. So between the juicy story and while running away from zombies I listened to "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey, "Thunderball" by Tom Jones, "You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra, "We Have All The Time In The World" by Louis Armstrong, "Diamonds Are Forever" by Shirley Bassey, "Live And Let Die" by Paul McCartney & Wings, "The Man With The Golden Gun" by Lulu, "Nobody Does It Better" by Carly Simon, "Moonraker" by Shirley Bassey, "For Your Eyes Only" by Sheena Easton (of course!), "All Time High" by Rita Coolidge, "Never Say Never Again" by Lani Hall, "A View To A Kill" by Duran Duran, and "The Living Daylights" by a-ha. (BTW, Shirley Bassey knows someone, you know?)

All-in-all it was a great run. And I learned a few things that I thought I would share:

1) Even though running through the golf course may seem like a fabulous spur-of-the-moment idea at 5 AM - Because, hey! no golfers at 5 AM! - you have to keep in mind that there are also no frickin' lights at 5 AM. And golf courses are dark. Very dark. Staring as hard as you can at the ground to keep on the path is fraught with perils, including low hanging tree branches.

It looked kind of like this:

Although the darkness does add a realistic ambiance to the whole running away from zombies in a post-apocalyptic world feel, the effort required to keep from falling on your face is just over the tipping point into "too much".

Also, thinking that it will be easier to see on the side of the course where you'll get light from the cars on the freeway is a very false assumption. Glaring, moving headlights cast weird, disorienting shadows on the hilly landscape of a golf course that make you feel like you are going to fall into black chasms and never be heard from again.

2) In the dark and semi-dark of predawn, you may discover that the adorable cat and her kittens are actually an adorable skunk and her kittens. Moving off the path to give them a wide berth is wisest.

Going home smelling like a skunk, which could be analogous to smelling like a rotting corpse (eg, zombie), is not a proper way to start off a busy day.

3) Apparently 5:28 AM is a great time to turn on the sprinklers in the park. And there is nothing you can do about it when you are equidistant from all the sides.

Trying to find the silver lining, had you been skunked, a brisk morning shower might have helped, although unless you packed tomato juice I think you'd be stuck with the skunk funk. (We don't ever find canned tomato juice on the missions...weird...)

4) Telling a cyclist, "Sorry, running away from a horde of zombies" does not, apparently, ease the sting of having a runner pass them on the trail. And they are bitter. Oh so bitter.

5) All zombie chases will commence right as you hit that bridge or hill. And, oddly enough, right after ZR informs you that you have just picked up a car battery or a tool chest.

6) My supposition that a James Bond-themed ZR mission would be best done to a soundtrack of Bond theme music - especially the Connery and Moore years - was 100% correct.