HARTVILLE, Ohio — Brooke Gilliland wasn’t looking for love, but she found it.

In a rather odd place.

“You don’t expect to meet your soul mate in the parking lot of a zombie run,” the Butler native said.

Gilliland met Canton (Ohio) resident Jeremy Boal after the zombie run held at Switchback Raceway on Sept. 1, 2012. Though they didn’t run that event together, they’ve done plenty as a tandem since then.

“He just stopped to ask me where to go camping,” Gilliland recalled of that fateful day. “I wound up taking him and his buddy to the Monroe Hotel for some food.

“We got to talking and Jeremy said he’s never been to Pittsburgh ... I worked there at the time, so we hopped in the car and went. We just hit it off.”

They became running buddies, friends, then sweethearts. A 1998 Butler graduate, Gilliland moved to Ohio so they could be closer.

During a recent dog sled ride in Colorado, Boal proposed marriage.

“It had to be something different,” Boal said. “We’ve done a lot of goofy things.”

Among them was completing 30 mud runs over 38 weekends — from March 2 to Nov. 17 last year — to commemorate Boal’s 30th birthday.

The runs took place in nine states — New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Nevada — and varied in length from two miles to 30.

“We weren’t running competitively,” Boal said. “We just stuck together and ran together. We kept trying to beat our previous best time, but that was about it.”

Mud runs are as they sound. Most of the course is completed in muck. Boal and Gilliland had to scale 14-foot walls, crawl in mud under barbed wire, leap over fire, scale a muddy ski slope — whatever obstacles each course presented.

They completed one run while handcuffed together — an event that included some swimming.

“We’ve done 5Ks and half marathons. They’re OK, but a bit boring. I mean, it’s just running,” Boal said. “Climbing walls and walking planks is a lot more fun.

“I ran track in high school, but even with that, I ran hurdles. I’ve always needed that something extra.”

Mud runs offer plenty of that, including rope climbing, ice water, log and tire flips, paintball guns, swamps and water slides.

Boal said the course at Seven Springs — site of one of the mud runs — received two feet of snow the day before the scheduled run.

“The entire course was just trashed, but the run went on,” Boal said. “We went down a frozen slide that day.

“In Mansfield, Ohio, it rained hard the night before. We clogged through eight inches of mud for 12 miles.”

Gilliland, now a nurse anesthetist at Affinity Medical Center in Massillon, Ohio, was a cheerleader and gymnast while growing up in Butler. She didn’t get into distance running until 2010.

She tried the zombie run “because it was different.”

Her life has been rather different ever since.

“Our planning for those 30 mud runs became quite extensive,” Gilliland said. “We’re talking spreadsheets, travel plans, working with a tight schedule. It became pretty intense.

“On the few weekends we didn’t have a mud run, we did downhill mountain biking, whitewater rafting, I moved to Ohio one of those weekends ... There was always something.”

And while the couple completed every mud run it embarked upon, the achievement came with a price.

“It destroyed our bodies,” Gilliland said, laughing. “We don’t work out anymore. I guess you could say we’re taking a break.

“The 30th run was a 30-mile event that took two days. We completed it in 25 hours. I broke a toe that’s still bothering me today.”

Now pregnant with their first child, Gilliland is taking a break from mud runs while helping to plan the wedding.

“We were going to get married Sept. 1 — the two-year anniversary of when we met — but my baby’s due that day,” Gilliland said. “Better not take that chance.”

Down the road, this couple will be back running on the road — or through mud — whatever the case may be.

“We’ll get back to our crazy lifestyle, I’m sure,” Gilliland said.