This race was such an amazingly fun experience! You definitely have to be up for the adventure of misadventures, but it's completely worth it! Normally you have a team of 12 people split into 2 vans of 6 or an ultra team of just 6. My team had a hard time finding and keeping 12 people crazy enough so we ended up with a team of 9 as a freestyle team (whatever configuration you want). With the team of 12 you each run 3 legs of the relay. Each leg is a different length and elevation profile as you are running down New Hampshire and are at the mercy of the landscape. With 12 people all trying to guess their pace over extremely diverse legs it's really hard to have exact timing down (cue the misadventure). Also since they can't block off all the roads of NH your team (yes you are the drivers) are driving your vans (and somewhat directing yourself) through normally populated NH. Honestly the whole experience kind of reminded me of a track meet as you hangout with your friends waiting anxiously for your race (leg) that will go off AROUND a certain time. The race is non-stop once it starts so there will be night legs for some of your team as well!

You get shirts, the awesome team medals that come together to make one, tattoos, a bag of tons of fuel/food.

Most of the aid stations were amazing and had a variety of snacks, actual food, and drinks. I am Celiac and most of these stations had gluten free foods as well as foods that are naturally gluten free. A few were lacking and had even run out of water by the time we got there (my team was probably a mid paced team).

The scenery was AMAZING. It started at Mount Washington and went through the White Mountains National Forest. Really all of the route was beyond beautiful.

I didn't attend the expo if there was one.

The elevation was something fierce, but kind of expected since you are going through many of the mountainous roads of NH. Different legs had different elevations. A warning: They specify the difficulty of each leg, but honestly I have no idea what algorithm they use. You would think it would make sense to go by distance, elevation, and possibly how late the leg is in the race (to account for having run ones previously), but they don't seem to go by any of this. The first leg is only a mile but it is DIRECTLY UP A MOUNTAIN, then back directly down. It is killer (and honestly sounded like the hardest leg of the race) but they only labeled it as "Hard" when "Very Hard" was the hardest option. No one at our start time could run up it. You HAD to walk. Many other legs seemed off in their ratings too so I would look at all the stats and give them a rating yourself.

Parking at the start and any major transitions was really good. Since my team had only 9 members we had to switch who was in the vans at some minor transitions as well and that generally wasn't too bad either.

The race was really well put together for how different it is from any other race and how large scale it is. There were a few spots with unclear directions, but other runners/drivers or volunteers were quick to help when they could. For a 200 mile route where so much more could have gone wrong, it was really well organized.