Are City-Wide Running Races Fading Into the Past?

In his autobiographical book Ultramarathon Man, distance runner Dean Karnazes relates how his first marathon run went.  He was in high school and there was a charity drive in which donors would sign up to pay...if my memory serves me correctly...a dollar for each quarter-mile track lap the participating student ran.  Most reasonable people saw themselves pitching in up to 5 or 10 bucks.  But Karnazes saw fit to run his first full 26.2 mile marathon that day, circling the track 105 times...and then presenting his flabbergasted fellow students with the bill!  It must have been an awfully repetitive run for him...yet that's pretty much how track and field events are conducted.  It certainly is vastly different from the marathon and half-marathon races the past few decades, which often run through the heart of cities and spotlight their own attractions for the racers and those accompanying them.  Typically, streets are marked off and policemen stand at crossings to halt traffic, letting the runners pass through without having to stop...this must cost a pretty penny for the organizers.  I think it also would tend to annoy a lot of folks who just want to go about their normal business without this kind of disruption and delay.  Over my running "career" since 2010...in which I've confined my races to northern and central Florida... I've completed 13 half-marathons and one marathon.  Of these, 6 half-marathons took place in the heart of Gainesville for the Five Points of Life event held in February, 2 races on the south side of Ocala, and 1 in the Tavares-Mount Dora area of Lake County...the others were deliberately conducted in predominantly rural settings.  Even the Ocala races took place mostly on country roads, although the traffic was high enough there to require a bit of police presence and management.  A few years ago the Ocala Marathon/Half-Marathon ceased to be, and in 2020 Gainesville's Five Points organizers switched the race site away from central Gainesville to southwest of town.  After Covid pre-empted the 2021 races, they resumed...back to the heart of town with a modified course that still had runners going through downtown Gainesville, the University of Florida campus (including the football stadium) and the famous hills of NW 16th Avenue.  But the marathon event was eliminated, leaving the half-marathon as the only long-distance event here in February.  Gainesville has another annual half-marathon they hold annually, the Tom Walker Memorial, which uses the rails-to-trails Hawthorne Trail in a there-and-back race emanating from Boulware Springs Park in the southeastern part of town...no police or city infrastructure needed here.  And that's the trend I see coming: races far from streets and set in rural areas and parks.  Furthermore, I see another trend in which half-marathons, marathons, and even ultra-races (longer than 26.2 miles) are being conducted in parks where runners go through multiple loops to achieve the distance they're seeking.  Next Sunday, the 10th, there will be such a race on the Hawthorne end of the Hawthorne Trail...half-marathoners will do a 6-plus mile there-and back on the trail twice, while those running the marathon will do it four times.  But then again, the overhead cost for staging this race is bound to be much, much lower than had they done it through city streets.  On June 18, Ocala has their own similar race planned at their southeastern Baseline Greenway Park...the course loop is a little longer than a mile and half-marathon runners will do it 12 times (no marathon race planned here).  Since 2019 (with a 14-month gap because of Covid), Gainesville has had its own weekly race, the Depot Parkrun 5K, with takes place entirely on park grounds and involves 4 laps to achieve the distance...but it's free and not very long.  The Hawthorne and Ocala races I just mentioned cost a bit of money...the question is whether runners will decide to forgo the adventure of the course in favor of getting a posted result.  As for me, I'm undecided.  I look on the Internet running calendars and still see races occurring in other cities across the country...maybe this drawing back from urban events is only a local phenomenon, who knows...