The Rock and Roll race series definitely knows how to put on an event and the New Orleans Marathon was no exception. The Expo was well done with plenty of interesting and knowledgeable vendors to spend time with and pick their brains. The corral setup was smooth and actually ran quickly and efficiently, much better than I have experienced in the past with Rock and Roll events. The course was staggeringly flat, almost to the point where the lack of topography was worse than having a few hills for variety. The first half of the race was quite interesting, through some historic neighborhoods and the French quarter. The half and full didn't split until after mile 12 so there was plenty of weaving in and out of crowds during the first half of the race. After the split, there was a massive decrease in the number of runners around me. It seemed that this race had an even larger proportion of half marathoners than any race I've done in the past. This wasn't a big deal to me, but someone who isn't comfortable running by themselves might find this disconcerting to come so far into the run. The biggest draw back to this race was the lack of spectators. While I don't need big crowds for motivation, it was oddly quiet for the vast majority of the run. I assume this was as a result of being New Orleans and early on a Sunday morning so shouldn't have been much of a surprise. The back half of the marathon was not as interesting, a couple of out and backs through a park and along a lake front. It was nice, but without much spectator support it wasn't much different than a typical weekend long run. But, with the flat course and great weather, it was definite PR type conditions and I was able to set a PR by about 10 minutes so no complaints for me.