My husband and I ran this race as a part of a relay team. We were well trained and my leg of the race went great and I loved my leg of the race. Even with the hills, I finished well under my goal pace. My concerns with this race are more with the inconsistencies.
My brother picked up our bibs at the expo the day before for the relay team. The shirts were very small. I normally always order a men's shirt because the women's are also cut small. When my brother got all of our stuff he said they had a medium men's and a women's large for us. Neither of those sizes we're what we ordered. Also the men's medium was larger than my women's large :(

My leg of the relay exchange was great. Well staffed, orgainized and made me think the whole race was super well done. I picked up my bag of snacks and went to the next relay excahnge to get my husband. This next exchange was very under staffed. The bags of snacks were on the ground under the table, with no one maning it. The only reason my husband got one was because I told him they were for the relay runners. This exchange was at the 10 mile timing mat, which threw off the timing wristband exchange. (Some people changed before the timing mat, some people after). Once my husband and I finished, we drove back downtown to meet my mom and dad and wait on the rest of our relay team to finish. The website had adveristed that you got you medal at the exchange points. We learned a couple of days before the race from an unofficial Instagram post that this had been changed to make it "more fun" for everyone to run in together and get the medals together at the end. This meant we we're waiting for our whole team to come in at the finish for another 2 hours. Since I started, I knew that there were lots of tents and a stage set up so I guessed we would have plenty to do. When we got back to the finish line, 2 hours after the start... It was already starting to close down. Booths were kind of out of stuff and lots of tables were empty. So we walked to a Starbucks and waited ( along with about 100 other people). I really had wanted to buy a shirt to replace my comically small one, but they were not even selling Charlotte Marathon merchandise...
As the hours dragged on, my initial excitement about this race wore off. The crowds really died down once the half marathoners finished. The announcer at the finish did a really great job of staying exciting and calling out names of finishers. The racejoy app was a nice touch and helped us stay connected throughout the whole race. At the end, we finished and ran across the finish line together, and got our 5 medals. This was most disappointing to me. There were no finish line photos (no course photography at all actually) but you could wait in line to get a photo with a backdrop. The finisher food was sorely disappointing. Banana and granola bar ... The exact same as in my bag earlier. The race website had mentioned more for the finish (no chocolate milk!). My mom, who had waited at the finish line all day, told me that there was alot more at the finish but the 5k finishers we're taking things by the bag full because the finisher food was unmanned. We finished our relay in 4:30 and it was really starting to empty out. This would not be a Marathon to run slow because I can not imagine that anything would still be happening an 1.5 after we left.

The star wars half was really wonderful. My husband and I run very different paces, (11-12min/mile for me, 7-8 min/mile for him) so we did not submit times so that we could run together. I wish I would have, because we were in H corral, aka the last corral to go. There are so so many walkers and we caught up with the pacers from the G-F corrals pretty quickly, but lost them again during some of the later bottlenecks in the course. Running through the parks is always worth it, but I will submit my time in the future and not fight the back of the pack crowds.