I took part in the Grand Slam weekend and second up was the 5k on Saturday.

We hit the expo Friday afternoon which is in the Arts Quest building across from the historic Steel Stacks. It was easy to navigate with a good mix of vendors. Shout out to Aftershokz!

Earlier in the week we received a virtual goody bag with lots of discounts from the race sponsors. Since I was running the Grand Slam I got a long sleeve and half zip. Both were very nice quality.

Parking was the same as the it was for the expo so that made things easy. The only catch was that some lots would be closed until late morning due to the 10k. Since I was running that as well it was no big deal.

It was a little chilly but there were several buildings right at the start to take cover in and as an added bonus they had bathrooms too!

The race started a little over 10 minutes late due to a train coming through but there's no much they could have done about that. Thankfully it wasn't freezing out.

I don't typically look at course elevation before hand so I was a little surprised with how hilly it was. There was a decent sized hill on the way to a bridge that we crossed and another hill shortly after. We were rewarded with some down hills after that though.

The finish winds you around some of the abandon buildings from the old steel works before finishing right in front of the abandon Steel Stacks. This would be the first of three times I'd cross that finish line since I was doing the grand slam.

The medal was the same size and design as the trail metal except of course it said 5k.

I didn't grab any water on course but there were two water stops. Post race they had granola bars, bananas and water.

Overall I really enjoyed this 5k. It was my first larger scale 5k and I had a lot of fun running it.

Some people ran it stand alone but there was also the Grand Slam option, the Hat Trick option and the Five and Dime option. I really liked this because everyone was really out there doing their own thing.