Massive crowds, obviously. We skipped the Expo due to Covid and had our bibs/t-shirts mailed to us and they arrived about 3 weeks prior to the race. Swag was good, nice multicolored Gildan moisture wicking tee and a nice medal made of actual metal!

This is a race that you need to do your own research on in advance...like where to park for the shuttle and at what time, where to drop off your own bag for what they call the Sweat Shuttle (this is your bag that you will then pick up down the block from the finish line in dowtown after the race), where to catch the shuttle back to your parking lot (and make sure you get on the correct bus as there are at least 3 different shuttle parking lots), what time the last shuttle leaves, etc.

Some surprises for sure here: 1. No post race beer!!!---dude, are you kidding me? I just ran a friggin' steep a$% bridge and am sweating from head to toe; I don't care that it's 9 am, I want a beer! The house band was awesome, but it's hard for me to party down if I don't have a beer or a drinky drink in my hand.
2. The post race shuttle back to our parking lot took 45 minutes. That added a lot of unnecessary time to the logistical side of things and we weren't expecting that. Obviously everyone would rather have a short walk to the car, but we were not expecting 45 minutes on a dang school bus!
3. The post-race park where the band plays and you grab food and water, was way, way, way too small for the crowd. It was totally jammed and was basically a mess. It was not a relaxing park environment because of the size of the crowd compared to the small park.
4. Although there are volunteers all over the place, each of them is assigned a specific task and they pretty much only know about that task...this race needs some information booths set up at start and finish that you can go to and ask questions like where's the shuttle, where's the sweat shuttle set up, is there beer?
5. They don't have water right at the finish line. You finish the race and walk 30 feet to get your medal, but then there's no waters anywhere!!! You gotta walk down the block quite a ways to get a water...like a few minutes walk. I'm not used to that. This is literally the only race I've ever been to that did not have waters available immediately following the finish line. Organizers seriously, seriously, seriously need to fix this. It was the first thing my wife said to me when she finished the race and I totally agreed with her. Instead of being number 5 of my list of surprises, this one should be number 1.

The good...Porta Johns everywhere both start and finish line (didn't notice any during the race as I was runnin' my skinny butt off). Tons of waters, small Powerades, and fresh fruit available post race, though you gotta walk a few minutes to get to them. Also found a free grilled chicken sausage stand that was all you can eat so many were getting multiples. Another major positive was the massive police presence at start line, all over the entire course, and at the finish line and park area. Major kudos to those in blue and the organizers for having them virtually everywhere. Totally felt safe because of it!

This is a different kind of race and one you should try out to see if you like it. See if you like the massive crowds and all the logistical things involved. It's expensive to stay in Charleston too, so that's a factor for me for future years and I'm told that they NEVER do discount codes or discounts on the race, NEVER (why should they? They get 40k people to sign up without them).
Absolutely 100 percent loved running the bridge (it was the race highlight for me by far), but the long shuttle ride after the race, no beer post race, no water at the finish line, plus all the other logistical things you have to conquer to do this one, well, you gotta want it...and I'm not sure I do want that again. We're going to try the Savannah Bridge Run in Georgia next and see how that compares.

By the way, I trained hard for this race and actually pr'd my 10k best by quite a bit. Although they don't have pacers, you can easily find one to run with to push you to your limit. I was lucky that my previous 10k best time submitted was accepted and organizers put me in a corral at the very front, so I didn't have to navigate any walkers or slow pokes. That...was awesome. If you don't have a good official 10k race time in the last year to submit, you're going to be starting in one of the corrals to the rear, so be prepared to navigate tons of slowies.

Overall, I'd give this race 4 out of 5. They do pretty well in handling such a huge endeavor, but some improvements certainly could be achieved (like cans of cold beer with your bib drink ticket, waters right there at the finish, way faster return shuttle routes, information booths, that kind of thing).

Link to this review