RunRace USA › Minnesota › Grandma's › The weekend

The city behind the course

A Duluth weekend

Start with the places the marathon actually passes.

The route's local signatures

Meet the architecture and landscape along the course. Use these places to get to know the city before deciding how to spend your time on your feet.

Glensheen Mansion

Near mile 21.7

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 17 meters.

Fitger's Brewery Complex

Near mile 24.1

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 20 meters.

Essentia Health St. Mary's Medical Center (Vision Northland tower)

Near mile 24.2

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 89 meters.

Greysolon Plaza (former Hotel Duluth)

Near mile 24.4

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 58 meters.

Historic Old Central High School

Near mile 24.6

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 70 meters.

Alworth Building

Near mile 25.0

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 75 meters.

Medical Arts Building

Near mile 25.0

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 58 meters.

Maurices Headquarters Tower

Near mile 25.1

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 51 meters.

A weekend rhythm that protects race day

  1. Arrival. Base your first walk on the real start and finish geometry, then inspect the final approach in the route map.
  2. Packet pickup. Go to Essentia Health Fitness Expo, Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC), Pioneer Hall and Arena, Entrances A and B inside its published window; save the final hours offline.
  3. The day before. Choose one course landmark, keep the outing short, and finish your feet-up time early.
  4. Race day. Follow the transportation plan, not ordinary weekend traffic directions.
  5. After the finish. Let the finish-area access plan decide the meal and meetup, especially on a point-to-point course.

Where the weekend should be based

The thing runners get wrong here is treating the finish line as the thing to be near. Grandma's is point to point and every single participant is bused from Duluth up to Two Harbors, so your real address on race morning is a bus loading lot, not a hotel lobby. Canal Park is still the best base, but it earns that on the strength of the walk home after 26.2 miles and the walk to the DECC before dawn, not on proximity to the start. The second mistake is trying to book online: the race says many Duluth hotels do not accept online bookings for marathon weekend at all, so call the property directly, and if you are shut out, check again in April and May when the block cancellations release.

Compare the actual hotel geometry →

Course geometry provenance is stated beside the player; elevation profiles always use the same route loaded there. City geometry is OpenStreetMap, ODbL. Aerial imagery is from USGS and USDA; other images carry their own source credits. Weather figures use Open-Meteo reanalysis for June 15-23 across 2016-2025 at the start line. Schedule, prices and expo hours were checked in 2026-08-26 and are the fields most likely to move: confirm them on grandmasmarathon.com before you book anything. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it fast.