St. Patrick's Day half marathon! I was near the front as I was going for a PR, and in my corral there wasn't much dressing up. Later back in the race there were costumes but where I was was all business. Expo was ok. A little hard to get to as it's in NYC. So parking is always an issue. Expo itself was pretty small. Race shirt was a long sleeve tech shirt which is good quality. Starting area was ok. Portages-potties had really long lines but I got in before the start. Closing of the corrals happened too early in my opinion, especially with the long bathroom lines. I didn't do bag drop, but from what I heard, pickup was an absolute disaster. They closed the drop off per each corral really early, but had a no-corral/free-for-all drop-off, which made up 80% of the drop-offs, so at pickup there were thousands of people trying to get bags and no order to it.

Race itself. Route was pretty good. We started in Brooklyn in Prospect Park which had some early hills. Went over the Manhattan Bridge around mile 5-6 which was the toughest "hill" for me. After that we had a long flat stretch where I picked up speed. This part was on the highway which had almost zero fan support, really disappointing. Came back into the city around Times Square heading to Central Park and the fans showed up again. Really cool to run through that part of the city. Overall, it was fun and I'd do it again.