Where to stay

No hotel sits within a ten minute walk of the start, though 0 are within twenty. Plan the morning around that.

The race-week geography

The mistake is booking a hotel next to the start. The MCM start on Route 110 and the finish at the Marine Corps War Memorial are only about a mile apart as the crow flies, but they sit on opposite ends of a road network that is entirely shut down from 3:00 a.m., and the finish is the end you actually care about. You will be at the start for roughly forty-five minutes at dawn and at the finish for hours afterward, in a foil blanket, needing your bag from a UPS truck at Wilson Blvd and N Lynn St and then a shower. Book the finish, not the start, and let MCM's own machinery carry you to the line: a 4:30 to 6:30 a.m. shuttle from Crystal City, Metro opening at 5:00 a.m., and the Pentagon and Pentagon City stations feeding Runners Village. There is one more wrinkle nobody plans for: the expo is not in Arlington at all. It is at the National Building Museum in downtown DC, so whichever base you pick, one day of your weekend is a river crossing. Book through JEMS Hospitality, which MCM names as its only authorized housing agent, and note MCM's own warning that pirating sites impersonate the official block.

Rosslyn

Walk to the finish and the Finish Festival; Metro or shuttle to the start

This is the base that solves the hard problem. The Finish Festival occupies downtown Rosslyn from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., the UPS bag trucks are at Wilson Blvd and N Lynn St, and the festival is a short walk from the finish at the War Memorial, which means your room is a short walk from all of it. At 5:30 a.m. Rosslyn is dead quiet and already barricaded: in the 2025 list N Oak, N Kent, Lynn, Fort Myer Drive, Wilson Blvd, N Moore, N Nash, Fairfax Drive, 17th St N and Marshall Drive all shut from 3:00 a.m., most until 6:00 p.m. That is a feature on the way home and a nuisance on the way out, so plan to walk to Rosslyn Metro and ride to Pentagon rather than drive anywhere.

Crystal City and Pentagon City

Shuttle or Metro to the start; shuttle or Metro back from the finish

This is where MCM's own logistics are built. Start shuttles run from 23rd Street and Crystal Drive to Runners Village in the North Pentagon parking lot between 4:30 and 6:30 a.m., free parking is in the underground lots at 23rd and Crystal Drive, and the Pentagon and Pentagon City stations are the designated access to Runners Village. At 5:30 a.m. this is the least stressful place to be on the whole course, because you are getting on a bus rather than solving a problem. The cost is on the back end: the finish shuttle at Oak Street and Wilson Blvd runs 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., so if you finish before 10:00 a.m. it is not running yet and Metro from Rosslyn is your only ride.

Downtown DC

Metro to both ends; walkable to the expo

Choose this only if the trip is as much about the city as the race. It puts you next to the expo and on the course itself for miles 10 and 16 through 19 around the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall. But race morning becomes a Metro commute that has to start not long after the system opens at 5:00 a.m., and race afternoon means finding your way from Rosslyn back across the river with 14th Street Bridge lanes and the Key Bridge closed. Note that Madison Drive NW, Jefferson Drive SW, and 4th and 7th Streets NW closed at 3:45 a.m. in 2025 and stayed shut to 2:00 p.m., so a hotel right on the Mall means walking around a course, not through it.

Anywhere requiring a car on race morning

Not viable

There is effectively no way to drive to the start. Route 110 itself, Washington Boulevard, Memorial Drive, Route 27, S Rotary Road, S Fern Street, S Eads Street and Army Navy Drive were all closed from 3:00 a.m. in the 2025 list. The one legitimate car move is the Kiss and Run drop-off at the corner of Army Navy Drive and Fern Street, where a driver leaves you to walk into the North Pentagon lot. If someone is driving you, that is the only address to put in the phone.

Hotels, by walk to the start

Distances are measured from the modeled course endpoints.

Walk to start	Hotel	Distance
22 min	Sheraton	1792 m to start
23 min	DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Washington DC - Crystal City	1862 m to start
24 min	Inn of Rosslyn	1923 m to start
24 min	Residence Inn Arlington Rosslyn	1939 m to start
24 min	The Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City	1913 m to start
26 min	Hyatt Centric Arlington	2042 m to start
26 min	Sonesta Select Arlington Rosslyn	2088 m to start
27 min	Embassy Suites Crystal City National Airport	2134 m to start
27 min	Hotel Hive	2140 m to start
27 min	Le Méridien Arlington	2136 m to start
27 min	State Plaza Hotel	2184 m to start

Race weekend hotels on Booking.com ↗ Race weekend hotels on Expedia ↗

Dates prefilled for Friday October 23 to Monday October 26, 2026. Those are affiliate links: they cost you nothing and they are how this guide stays free.

The morning connection

Metro is the answer to nearly every MCM transport question, and MCM has arranged for it to open at 5:00 a.m. on race morning, early enough to get you from any sensible base to Runners Village well before the 7:20 a.m. start. Two details catch people out. First, the station that sounds perfect for the start, Arlington Cemetery, does not open until 8:30 a.m. on event morning: it is a spectator station for mile 25, not a runner station. Use Pentagon or Pentagon City instead. Second, the whole start and finish corridor closes in the small hours, roughly 3:00 to 3:30 a.m. from Rosslyn down past the Pentagon, so any plan involving a car after about 3 a.m. is already dead.

Room sorted?

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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 October 21-29 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 www.marinemarathon.com/event/marine-corps-marathon before you book anything. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it fast.