Sara Christensen's Staging Area

This was my first marathon and I really enjoyed it! Nice field size, well run race, great crowd support, and ample water and Powerade stations. It’s a mostly flat course, but there are about 3mi of pretty challenging hills around Iroquois Park (approximately mile 12). Definitely do some hill training and pace the first half so that you leave gas in the tank to tackle those, but otherwise the course is pretty easy. (Of note, this course has changed over the years quite a bit, so take older reviews containing course complaints with a grain of salt). Residents along the route were out cheering, playing music and offering snacks, and we got to run through Churchill Downs a week before the Kentucky Derby, which was really special. (We even saw some horses doing their morning workouts on the back stretch!) The expo was small but well done, the medal is really nice, and there were ample post race snacks and water, mylar blankets, and photo ops. My only real complaint was the race shirts were pretty low quality. (When you run a marathon you should expect some sort of tech shirt that you can actually run in, not a cotton tshirt.) I would definitely do this race again!