Running Races Being Pushed Off the Streets and Onto Remote Trails

I'm noticing a trend in public running races here in northern central Florida...and judging by the race calendar elsewhere in the state, it isn't just happening here.  It used to be that we'd have races in a more urban setting, races that were more or less looped courses that afforded the participants a variety of the experiences and sights belonging to the city in question...that to me was always one of the big appeals of racing.  We had the annual Five Points marathon/half-marathon that ran right through the heart of Gainesville in such a looping course, even passing through the University of Florida's football stadium at one point.  Ocala also had its annual racing event, another loop (at least for the half-marathon event) although its course covered the more rural horse farms south of the city.  Both of these events are gone now, leaving runners who want to experience marathons or half-marathons races in this area to do so on the Hawthorne Trail, either from Boulware Springs Park in southeastern Gainesville or from the Eastern Trailhead in the town of Hawthorne.  Ocala is holding no marathons or half-marathons anymore, not even on some remote rails-to-trails course.  Gainesville still holds these two distances in races, but they're now confined to that one trail way off in the boondocks far from civilization...a nice surface but pretty much boring scenery: just trees and more trees.  Plus, the races are all there-and-back, and two of the three offered additionally required repeated laps...ouch!  It's as if society has said that we runners aren't welcome among them anymore and we need to go hide somewhere off in the woods to do our "thing" from now on.  Nowadays if I want to remain in north central Florida and experience marathons or half-marathons, I'm left to either retreating to the Hawthorne Trail or to watching videos others have made of marathons elsewhere...which is what I've been doing lately.  Interesting races, like the Toronto Half-Marathon, New York City Marathon, Walt Disney World Marathon and the Boston Marathon, all provide a visual backdrop of the always changing surroundings, with the sense of a Tolkienesque quest as the runners plod onward to the finish line...and I'm right there (in my living room) with them.  None of those courses are looped either, meaning that real-life participants in those places have to figure out their transportation strategies beforehand...no jumping out of the car before the race and jumping back into it afterwards.  On the other hand, at home I can just flick "pause" to take a bathroom break (or leave it running). Back in the late 1940s science fiction writer Clifford Simak...one of the best in my opinion...wrote a series of tales in which our society in the future would evolve to where people lived lives of rural seclusion, hardly ever directly interacting with one another and depending on robots to serve them and vicarious entertainment to fulfill themselves.  Move over future, here we are now...at least in my "section of the woods"...