I did the 2017 mini, and the race itself was nice. It was very flat and there was a TON of support along the route, both official and in the form people of Louisville out on their porches cheering you on. I loved the moral support from the spectators more than anything! The course wasn't pretty in the same way as some of the others I've seen, but it was interesting to see Louisville up close and personal. I loved seeing the inner city and lower income neighborhoods like that, and seeing people out on their porches cheering us on gave me faith in humanity! At one point, we ran past what I assume was a nursing home and the residents were outside cheering. Somewhere else, what appeared to be students from a school we ran past came out on a weekend to cheer! At one place someone had set up a seat for their cat at their open window and the cat was watching the runners.

Expo was confusing and poorly laid out. I think it would benefit the vendors as well if it was easier to navigate and see everyone. I didn't see the booth to get my Bluegrass Classic sticker and had a little trouble getting my extra medal after the race. Fortunately I had brought by RunTheBluegrass medal for photo ops, so that worked out. The man handing them out was also very nice about it.

The parking situation was kind of awful. We are not particularly familiar with Louisville despite living only an hour away, so we parked in a lot that was marked on the map we got at expo, so we assumed that it was a good place to park, and when we tried to leave there was no way out. We were completely trapped due to combination of road closures for the race and one-way streets. Fortunately a nice officer directed us to a way out (the wrong way down a one way street), but it would have been nice to have known ahead of time to avoid the panic and circling back through the parking garage.

There was an hour and half delay for weather, which was frustrating but justified. Unfortunately, that left us starting the run during the worst of the downpour and then running into the midday heat and humidity. Definitely not a PR for me. By the time we started, I was already hungry, so I got stuck eating most of my gummies right away. I can only imagine how the full marathoners felt. Some of the stops were handing out orange slices, though, and that was amazing. By the time I finished the race, I was ready to devour absolutely everything they handed me, but the food situation was so poorly organized for the number of people running that it took 15 minutes to get anything at all. I ended up eating the banana and getting another while I was waiting to get to the next food handout. I know it would be a ton of work ahead of time, but if they could pre-bag food packs together like at Run the Bluegrass, it would keep the huge backup of people at bay.

Another thing that I'd like to see would be some less pricey hotels available as "official" ones. I know secondhand that, due to the delayed start, people in unofficial hotels had some trouble meeting checkout deadlines and didn't have the benefit of the hotel being "official" and therefore more likely to accommodate in some way. It also would made me more likely to stay in Louisville the night before and avoid driving into the city two days in a row (Expo and race day) and the 4 am raceday wakeup.