What happens when a race you're an ambassador of suddenly shuts doors.....

I am about to rant about Zombies.........be warned.

This Wednesday marked the first time I have ever been blindsided as a blog ambassador. I received an email for a Nationally known race series, Run For Your Lives, which I have been aligned with since the beginning of the summer. A series I have written about quite a few times, even prior to my partnership with them.

This is the ONLY race series my fiance Gabe has been enthusiastic over since we started running in late 2011. We ended up not doing the run in 2012 because we were both in crazy training mode. I was running my first half marathon and he was running his first full marathon less than 2 months after Run For Your Lives. I was petrified of twisting an ankle.

When I was given the opportunity to promote the race series in exchange for our entries being comped, I jumped at the chance. Even with the fact that Run For Your Lives took away my only off weekend in November. I hosted a giveaway for a pair of Run For Your Lives entries - and my winner participated in her cities series in October.

Well, The Zombie Apocalypse happened................Along with a handful of other bloggers, I received the following email on Wednesday.

Thank you for being a part of our Run For Your Lives blogger program. At this time, I am very sad to inform you that all upcoming races have been cancelled.

After 2.5 great years, Run For Your Lives be closing our doors, effective immediately. We had a great run and owe our success to our loyal bloggers like you.  I thank you again for being a part of the Zombie Preparedness Team supporting our brand, and promoting us over these past months.

Run For Your Lives website? Shut Down - you get a 404-Not Found message. Same with their facebook and twitter accounts.

Then tonight, as I was researching to see if the reason of this cancellation has been released (rumors of bankruptcy are floating), I come across this news article: Zombie Runs Salvaged. Apparently, another organization - Human Movement Management, is picking up the final three runs including Central Florida's, the race I was promoting. The other two are located in Texas, Dallas and Austin.

15,000 tickets had been sold by RFYL for the three canceled events. William Ward, former vice president of marketing for Run for Your Lives LLC, said the company's head, Ryan Hogan, agreed to let Human Movement take over the zombie runs at no cost. He said the company handed over its list of people who bought tickets to Human Management.

One thing I forgot to mention, those who purchased their nearly $90 race entries to this race were told to personally contact their bank for a refund. Sorry but this whole thing smells fishy.

And no, I am not a scorned blogger writing this. I am one concerned about my readers. I enthusiastically promoted this series to receive a generic 'sorry we are shutting the doors' email. While I am very upset at the outcome of this race series, I have to be honest. There was a huge sigh of relief knowing I had my weekend off - I am running my first marathon this weekend, followed by a half marathon 6 days later.....then two weeks following that, another half.