This was my first time ever running this race. To start with, the convention is held at Soldier Field which in my opinion is a good, central location to a lot of the attractive sights and things to do in Chicago. The vendors are all along the access hallways inside the stadium and there are plenty to buy literally just about everything you'd need for race day. Packet pickup is located on the upper levels after you have had a chance to go through the bulk of the vendors. Pickup is not crowded, easy, and well organized. The long sleeve tech shirt included with the packet is outstanding and I'm sure I'll be using it quite a bit for runs on colder days. The start and finish is at Jackson Park, which is about a 20 minute Lyft ride from the middle of downtown. The race offers shuttles to athletes but I passed on that option to be able to get more of sleep since the shuttle option means an earlier departure from the hotel. My cousin and I took and shared a Lyft car from our hotel at around 5:45am and arrived at Jackson Park at around 6:05am for a 7:00 race start which is plenty of time to hit port-a-potties, warmup, etc. There were plenty of participants, but the park or the corrals never felt crazy crowded, just right. The course is mostly flat with a few small inclines here and there but absolutely nothing serious or to worry about; this is definitely a flat course. The views are great most of the way as you run on Lakeshore drive with Lake Michigan to your right on the first 8 miles or so and on the left the rest of the way. Along the course they had plenty of hydration stations full of volunteers, there was never a lack of them. There were also a few with wet towels and even ice, and those were awesome as the weather was quite hot and sunny that day. The finish line had the only small issue I feel can be done better, as the width of the corral right after you cross is quite narrow and if you're not alert enough to grab Gatorade and the popsicles after they give you your medal (which is also great BTW) you'll miss them as they want you to keep on moving to keep the area clear of runners and it becomes impossible to walk back there to get any of that (I tried, they wouldn't let me). The post race beer was great, the pizza not so much, but that's not a huge deal to me; I always put a recovery drink on my bag at drop-off anyways. I'd definitely do this race again in a heartbeat and would just hope for better weather---that's something the organizers can't control. What they could control I feel they did a great job with overall.