RnR Liverpool was my first race outside of North America, and trust me, it's hard to pack when you're going to be gone for a week, especially the 4-5 days leading up to the race! I had no idea what would/wouldn't be at the expo and a lot of the other specifics were a bit of an unknown

Getting there: if you're coming from overseas or outside of Britain, fly into Manchester and take the national rail to Liverpool Lime Street or fly into the John Lennon Airport. I didn't stay at one of the race hotels, but I stayed at the Hilton City Centre which was close to the expo/start/finish, etc., so it worked out.

The Expo: Compared to other RnR expos, I thought it was on the small side. It was easy to get in, get your bib and shirts and fix any issues you had. I ended up moving to faster corrals (pens as they're called in the UK), and had stickers placed on my 5K and Half Marathon bibs with the faster corral. It would have been nice to have an idea of what corrals held what times ahead of time, but I couldn't find that on the website. There were some local running stores and other local vendors there, but definitely not as big as some of the RnR expos I've been to in the US.

Start Time: 9 am for the half, 10 AM for the full. It seemed very odd to me that the half would start before the full. I would have expected the full to start first and the half to start later.

The race: takes you through downtown Liverpool, the docks, Hope Street, Penny Lane, Princes Park, past the Anglican Cathedral, through Cavern street and along the waterfront. I think one of the few times where you feel like you saw a good chunk of the city during a race for a Rock N Roll Event. The course itself was fairly flat, with really only one hill around mile 4, but even that wasn't terrible. It was mainly a road/paved course, but towards the end, you were running on uneven pavement, bricks or cobble stones which got a little iffy.

Water/Aid Stations: they use actual plastic water bottles that are disposable in the UK. I like the idea since they had the sport caps on top of them and it made it easy to drink out of, but I nearly stepped on one at an aid station, which would have been ugly. They had some sort of sport drink which I didn't even try because I wasn't going to try anything new (and according to a friend, are very sweet compared to the US version of gatorade/powerade). They seemed more spread out though, no fewer than 2-2.5 miles in between

Mile Markers: seemed short in some spots, longer in others. Don't know what to make of that one.

The Finish: right along the water front. The chutes took you past water and bananas and ultimately into echo arena where there was more food and bag check. You then took the escalators or elevators (lifts) up and exited to the post race party

Post Race Party: plenty of music and some things to do. Merchandise was for sale and if you've done multiple RnR events, you picked up your world rocker medal there. If you did multiple events race weekend (the 5K on Saturday and any of the races Sunday), you picked up your remix medal (you also had to be sure you got a wrist band while picking up your bibs to identify yourself or no extra bling).

Overall a good race. I PR'ed by 1:09, which was a bit surprising since I didn't sleep well the night before and didn't feel like I ate enough breakfast. I think the water situation needs to be looked at for sure, a few people wiped out on rolling bottles! If you're looking for a fun overseas race, take a look.