This race was such a fun time! I missed out on the expo because I was driving in from out of town. My family members went, and said it was great. There were lots of booths and they both bought several things (shoe gems, advocare products, a sweat towel and waist band pack).
We arrived around 6 a.m. and had no problems parking. If you don't want to walk far to your car after the race, I'd recommend getting there around the same time. We wandered around for a while freezing and standing near the portapotties for warmth, and then I decided to go check my gear. The gear check was the place to be! It was warm, and there were regular restrooms and plenty of open floor space to sit! We stayed there until race time.

Everyone was sorted by corral and the start times were spaced out by ~5mins to try to keep the course as clear as possible with so many runners. That was a nice touch, and it was plenty crowded when my corral started, so I can only imagine what it would've been like without the spacing.

The course was not as scenic as I had hoped. You did get to run through plenty of Dallas and along a bike path, but you didn't really pass any big landmarks. Also, it was much hillier than I thought it would be, but it wasn't so hilly that you wanted to give up. Good space between the hills and most were a steady climb, not a huge mountain to power up.

The finish line was great, and you got your medal right away. The chute basically led you right to where you pick up your finisher's mug. The mug is this cool big plastic sectioned mug that has a cup of hot chocolate (it was hot!), chocolate for dipping, marshmallow, banana, pretzels and some cookies! It's dishwasher safe, and they had plastic bags to put it in to keep chocolate from getting all over your stuff on the way home!

We didn't hang around outside long because we were cold, but it looked fun! Lots of people milling about, music, and the merch booth was open so you could still get official race swag!