Our 4 year old son loves to run the little one mile fun runs with us and when we saw that Louisiana Marathon was doing a special Kids Marathon we knew we had to sign him up. And then I found out there was a special kids medal! He's all about the bling. Ohh yeah.

This was a pretty big kids run and they were trying to organize the fields by age, but it was a bit like herding cats. It felt like there was a lot of disorganization and it was very difficult to hear the race directors trying to tell people where to line up. My biggest issue with this race was they dangerously put ALL kids running with their parents in the back with the little, little kids running with their parents. They really should have a separate corral for older kids "racing" with their parents and then a final one for little ones fun running with their parents. My 4 year old son seriously almost got ran over several times by bigger kids and adults trying to sprint the 1.2 miles. My husband had to pretty much body shield him and shoulder check a few people so they wouldn't bowl over my son. One more separate corral for the little guys would alleviate all that.

Pros:
- 1.2 mile course aimed mostly at kids. It was a really cute event.
- They color coordinated the kids by their age and sent them out in corrals 5 minutes apart.
- Kids running solo have a matching wrist band that their parent must wear to pick them up in the specially marked parent meet-up at the finish. I liked that added security.
- There's a great kids finishers medal. My son was so proud of his! I swear his medal was bigger than my 5k medal. It was great.
- Kids also receive a size appropriate race t-shirt. I love that they had actual kid sizes for the shirts. He proudly wore his to pre-school the next week.
- They have a whole kids play area at the finish with blow up bouncy houses, slides, face painting and games. This was a lot of fun and a great idea for families waiting around on the adult race finishers.

Cons:
- As stated before, it was pretty dangerous putting the big kids with parents in the same corral as the little kids with parents. They're running for different goals. I hated that my son was getting run over by these bigger folks. Please, please add another corral next year for the younger littles with parents.
- There was a LOT of standing around waiting time as they released the corrals 5 minutes apart. The race started about 10 minutes late and it took almost another 45 minutes for our corral (the last one) to get to the start. That's tough for a 4 year old to stand around, in the cold, and wait that long to run.
- You couldn't hear what the race directors were trying to say. Maybe more speakers around the start would help. Not being able to hear just added to the confusion.
- There was no race morning bib pick-up.

All-in-all it was a really cute, fun event and my son loved it. I think it could be a great event with just a few little tweaks.