Marathon routes are rigged to look good—they're packed with 15 times more museums than the rest of the city.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
The benefits and biases of seeing the word's cities through marathons
arXiv · 2603.22183
The Takeaway
By analyzing 311 routes across five continents, researchers found that marathons don't just follow the best path for running; they are biased toward luxury brands and landmarks. A regular person would find it fascinating that these 'sporting events' are actually mathematically optimized PR tours designed to hide a city's less glamorous areas.
From the abstract
Marathons are now common ways of seeing cities, yet little is known about how representative their routes are. Using 311 marathon routes across five continents, we compare landmarks and amenities along the course with those elsewhere in the same city, finding that museums are 15.7 times denser near the route and that the median city has about 8.5 times more luxury brands near the route than elsewhere in the city. These patterns persist under perturbed routes with the same start and finish lines: