Sunburst race weekend involves a family walk friday night and then a marathon, half marathon, 10k, 5k run, and a 5k walk on Saturday morning. This is my third year running in sunburst and the second year running the 10k. The 10k course was not changed from last year to this year but the half and full marathons did have course changes this year for various reasons.

Packet pickup was Friday night and had a small expo with mainly the local running store, Fleet Feet Mishawaka, having much of their merchandise for sale. My husband actually picked up my packet for me since he works in downtown South Bend and had to pick up his own packet for the half marathon. In the race packet was our bib, a copy of the local running newspaper and the race shirt. The race shirt this year was an improvement over last year but the women's cut still ran small and was still a v neck, but they did allow me to swap out for a men's cut with no issues.

As I said, the 10k course was the exact same as last year and did run a tad long according to my garmin (6.4 miles) but we all know GPS watches can have a little bit of variance when it comes to races. However, it was the exact same distance my watch said last year (and i used a different watch last year). I believe there were for water stations on the 10k and each station had water and gatorade. The somewhat annoying thing was each water station switched up what they offered first; some had water first while others had the gatorade first. I wish they would have been consistent but it's not something that will keep me from running it again. The course started in downtown South Bend and then finished near the campus of Notre Dame. The 10k started at 7am. They had someone sing the National Anthem and then started right on time. Right before mile 3 there was a hill as we entered Indiana University South Bend's campus. And then at mile 5 there was Hallelujah Hill which wasn't crazy horrible but the placement of it kinda sucked lol.

After the race there were cups of water and gatorade (no bottled water - which was kinda weird), bananas, cups of fresh fruit, bagels, popsicles and chocolate milk. They also had shuttles available to transport runners back to the starting area to get back to their cars.

To read more of my experience at Sunburst this year check out: https://parentteachrun.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/sunburst-10k/