[h_r]

They could possibly do this but the logistics would be messy. For large marathons, people travel to the destination from all over the world and book hotels in the city where they can easily get to the start location. Also, seeing the city while running the marathon, however inconvenient to others, is part of the attraction of the location.

If the actual marathon course is somewhere remote from the city, it's unlikely such a place would have the hotel space for all the runners, and transporting them to/from the site would be a massive undertaking in itself. Chicago has about 45,000 runners every year. Then there are all the volunteers who need to get to and from stations around the course.

I'm not saying any of this to discount the argument that marathons impose a huge inconvenience, only that moving them elsewhere isn't so cut and dried a solution.

[ghaff]

>people travel to the destination from all over the world and book hotels in the city where they can easily get to the start location.

Or at the end. The Boston Marathon actually starts pretty much 26 miles to the west of downtown in a suburb/exurb. So runners do need transportation to get to the start. It's not really accessible by public transit but I imagine there are buses in addition to people just getting rides from friends/family.

It is held on a (state) holiday and a lot of Boston companies give the day off. (And companies out by the start like EMC do as well because their parking lots are used.)