The cooper River Bridge run is one of the largest 10ks in the US capped off at 40,000 participants. The race is a point to point race starting in Mount Pleasant, over the Author Ravenel Jr Bridge and ending by Marion Square in downtown Charleston, South Carolina.
To start out the weekend the race expo is held at the North Charleston Coliseum, it runs for two days all day long. They have almost 100 vendors ranging from shoes to clothes to nutrition and also sign ups for other local races. In your swag bag you received: cotton t shirt, (the logo every year is chosen by an art contest), buff, plastic and mesh bag, hand towel, coupons for the expo, and some nutritional snacks. Also once I got my bib number I turned the corner to see volunteer handing out cartons, yes cartons of flavored applesauce for free.
The race is a point-to-point which make parking a little tricky. My best advice would be to park downtown early and catch one of free shuttles across the bridge. They do have a shuttle for your clothes that they will bring to the finish line ** be sure to have a clear bag (like they one they give you in your for your swag bag). The bridge is closed for most of the day so if you park on the starting line/mt pleasant side you will not be able to get back for a few hours after you finish. The good thing is that the post race party at Marion Square has a huge live band lots of food and drink specials at the local bars. It does get extremely crowed if you get there late but it does clear out quickly. My friends and I were able to find a spot of the grass to sit and stretch and listen to the band.
The race itself was very fun, they had different bands set up every other mile, even on top of the bridge. There were plenty of aid station with both water and Gatorade. The bridge is about 2.5 miles long and it falls in the middle of the race. The long downhill portion of the bridge ends about a mile from the finish line so you get a nice reprieve before the end.
The tips I would give for this race would be:
- book reservations early
-park early, Charleston is a hard town to get around especially when the largest bridge is closed for most of the day.
Even if you are not a fan of large races I would still recommend you run this race at least once!