This was my first Rock 'N' Roll series marathon, so what better place to run one than the music capital of the world! The entertainment on the course and the scenery of Downtown Nashville was incredible! Seeing the neon lights of the bars and the recording studios with famous musicians faces was great! Having live bands place music everywhere on the course was an awesome distraction as well. That being said, it was all necessary to finish the monster hills of this course. I had read in different blogs in reviews to prepare myself for the hills of Nashville, so I trained for them and felt prepared. Let me tell you, NOTHING can prepare you for them, but they do give you the entertainment to push yourself through. The expo was really awesome and really big in the middle of downtown. You also get a really cool shirt and string backpack with all your free goodies. I did feel the shirt was a little on the low quality for how many racers were running and the parking was miserable! I had to pay $20 to park for the expo because of a hockey game at the arena next to the expo and I paid for parking on race day in which the parking directors did not park me in. They actually sent me in circles of the parking lot several times before I finally gave up and just parked. Besides the parking, the shirt quality, the traffic, and the hills... this race was really, really fun! I just came to the realization that the course was jammed packed because Nashville is jammed packed. Being from a small town that was hard to cope with, but once I did, it really opens your eyes to everything else.. including the really cool, totally Nashville finisher medal!