Not sure why the half marathon is not listed as a race on here, but I ran that, not the 10k. This was probably the single worst half marathon I have ever run in my entire life. Now, I'm a girl who loves city running. I try to travel at least once/year to visit a new city (or one dear to my heart) and see it from a new perspective by running a half or full marathon. This race, however, was an incredible disappointment.

Full disclosure: I was running ill. I came down with some illness a week before the race, which left me unable to eat well leading up to the run, and I ended up running a bit anemic and extremely slow and had to stop to see a medic for the first time in my racing history (shoutout to Matt the medic, by the way for getting me some water and making sure I was good to go on).

Even if I hadn't been running while sick, I was still super disappointed with this race. To start, all over their website, the race company was bragging how this race was 'flatter and faster' than before and yikes, I'd hate to see what it was like before. This race is NOT flat and includes a number of very steep inclines, especially going over the bridges. Did we need to go over 3 bridges? I don't think so. One was more than enough for me. I would have much preferred no bridges and a PR. Also, while I thankfully didn't have to stop for it, a group of runners in front of me got stopped by a city train. How about you run your races on closed courses, hmm? That could have been really dangerous for quite a lot of people.

Mile markers were very poorly labeled, and aid stations were incredibly small. Like 2 tables with tiny dixie cups half full of water and nowhere near enough volunteers. I was tripping over people to get water and even then the volunteers weren't making any effort to actually hand out water. At most of the aid stations they were just standing at the tables and not actually holding cups for passing runners. It was also not clearly labeled what was water and what was electrolytes.

The end of the course leading back to the finish line had a LOT of turns and I almost got lost because the volunteers again didn't seem like they cared very much to be there. Post-race was decent because beer, but I basically paid $65 for 2 beers, so that felt like kind of a ripoff.

T-shirt was absolutely awful. Cotton!? Ugh, please give me a shirt I can actually run in, thanks.
Course scenery was pretty much just factories. Not much to look at so you better have a good podcast queued up. Expo also really boring, nothing to do there, very limited parking. Claimed there was free beer in an email, but when we got to packet pickup they were telling us it was $5. So is it free, or $5?
Overall, absolutely terrible race. Clearly lots of couch-to-5kers, though, and like if that's your thing, good on you, but you don't need chocolate milk and a banana and 2 beers to refuel after a 5k, js. I certainly would not do this race again, and I would probably go out of my way to tell others not to do it.