The race itself was fabulous, and I intend to do it again despite the challenges and frustration. The view of the river and bridge at the starting location was gorgeous, and running along the bridge was beautiful. The course was very fast - the first two miles were uphill, but it was a very gradual uphill so wasn't too much of a struggle. The 3rd and 4th miles were downhill, but it wasn't very steep, so it was an easy run but without the jarring of steeper downhills. I found myself running faster than normal in the downhill part, and then was able to keep up the pace when it leveled out in miles 5 and 6. Both my husband and I PRed, despite having to dodge slower people and walkers when the running path narrowed near the end. Both my husband and I had that problem, and he started in a much faster wave than I, so they must not have done a very good job of policing the waves. It's great that they allow walkers, but they should require walkers to start at the back, and stay over to the right of the course so faster people can pass. And they should require proof of time to qualify for the faster waves, so you don't have 12 minute milers getting in the way of 7 minute milers.

The part that wasn't so fabulous was the logistics. We were lucky because we stayed in a hotel that was an easy walk to one of the parking areas where the shuttles picked up. But even early in the day (7:30), there was a long line of cars going into the parking area, and there clearly was not enough parking. If you're planning to drive and you don't allow A LOT of extra time to get to the parking lot, get parked, get through security, and catch the shuttle, I think you could easily miss the race. But for me the shuttle ride and everything else went smoothly until after the race, when I got to bag check and they couldn't find my bag. It was a chilly day, and the emergency blanket wasn't helping much, so without my dry clothes I was in a panic, knowing it would take a while to get back to the hotel. The post-race food was minimal, and there were really long lines at all of the food trucks. There were also very long lines at the porti-pottis and to catch the return shuttle buses. There was no way for me to get warm, and the return shuttle trip was over an hour. By the time I got back to the hotel I was cold, stiff, and miserable. (Eventually they found my bag, but by that time I had already gotten really cold and didn't want to wait in the long porti-potti line to change, so I went straight to the long shuttle bus line.)

This could be a great race if they would limit the number of entrants and work out some of the kinks, and do something about the bag check. The bag check people were clearly overwhelmed, and mine wasn't the only bag that was lost.

The Expo was small and poorly configured, with booths on both sides of a hallway in a stadium, so it was poorly equipped to deal with a crowd. Also it looked like a number of the booths had packed up and left by the time we got there late Saturday evening.

The swag was very good - a very large metal and a nice short-sleeved technical shirt with an attractive design (with the state of Maryland flag on one sleeve and the rest gray and black with a silhouette of the bridge and a runner). The metals are unique in that they're designed to interlock with each other, providing an incentive to do the race again and again.