Where to stay

1 hotel inside a ten minute walk of the finish, and 11 within twenty. Where you book matters more here than it does at most races.

The race-week geography

The mistake people make here is booking near the start. St. George is a point-to-point run down SR-18 from the town of Central, roughly 26 miles of high desert away, and there is essentially nothing to sleep in up there. Everyone stays in St. George itself and rides a bus up in the dark: loading is at Vernon Worthen Park, 250 S 400 E, from about 3:45 to 5:15 a.m., with runners assigned to a departure slot they are expected to keep. So the only lodging question that matters is how easily you can reach Vernon Worthen Park before 5 a.m. and how far you have to move after you finish, because the finish line is at that same park. Three hotels carry official sponsor status for 2026: Best Western Plus Abbey Inn at 1129 S Bluff St, Hampton Inn & Suites at 1250 W SunRiver Parkway, and La Quinta at 91 East 2680 South. Sponsor status is not a room block, so book on the normal channels and book early; this is an 8,000-runner weekend in a small city.

Downtown St. George, walking distance to Vernon Worthen Park

5-15 minutes to bus loading and the finish

This is the correct base and it is not close. Vernon Worthen Park is both where the buses load at 3:45 a.m. and where you cross the line, so a downtown room turns the two hardest logistical moments of the day into short walks. At 5:45 a.m. downtown is dark, cool and quiet, with a slow stream of headlamps and space blankets converging on the park; you will not need a car, a shuttle, or a plan. It also means that at noon, wrecked, you walk a few blocks to a shower instead of finding a ride out of a closed street grid. Streets around 300 South, 300 East and 400 East go to local-traffic-only or full closure from Thursday and Friday onward for finish-line build, so if you are driving in on Friday evening approach from the south and expect to be waved around.

Bluff Street corridor (Best Western Plus Abbey Inn and the cluster around it)

drive, roughly 20-25 minutes from the finish area on race morning

Abbey Inn at 1129 S Bluff St is an official 2026 sponsor and sits on the main north-south artery, which is the practical trade-off: more rooms, easier arrival, but you are dependent on a car or a hotel shuttle at 3:15 in the morning. Bluff Street itself stays open, and the downtown closures generally begin at 3 a.m. with enforcement by 6 a.m., so an early drive toward the park is feasible if you go early and park well outside the closure ring. Do not plan to drive back into the same spot at 11 a.m. to collect the car: downtown stays shut until roughly 1 p.m.

South and southwest St. George (Hampton Inn & Suites at SunRiver, La Quinta on 2680 South, Quality Inn)

drive, roughly 22-25 minutes from the finish

Both remaining official sponsor hotels sit out here, and it is the calmest, newest end of town, but it is a genuine commute at 3:30 a.m. and again after you finish. The upside is that the police detour advice for the whole weekend is to run east-west along 700 South or Riverside Drive rather than anywhere near downtown, which is exactly the corridor these hotels feed into. If you are travelling with family who want to sleep past 4 a.m., this works better than downtown; if you are travelling alone and want to walk to the bus, it does not.

Central, Utah (the start town)

not applicable

Do not try to solve this by sleeping near the start. Central is a tiny community on SR-18 with no meaningful lodging stock, and SR-18 through Central is under traffic control from Sumac Drive to 200 South on the Thursday and Friday of race week. Even if you found a bed, you would finish 26 miles away from it with your car parked at the wrong end of the course.

Hotels, by walk to the finish

Distances are measured from the modeled course endpoints.

Walk to finish	Hotel	Distance
9 min	Best Western Travel Inn	703 m to finish
11 min	Best Western - Coral Hills	884 m to finish
11 min	Coronada Inn & Suites	868 m to finish
13 min	The Advenire, an Autograph Collection Hotel	1019 m to finish
17 min	Comfort Inn	1389 m to finish
17 min	Quicksand & Cactus Bed & Breakfast	1363 m to finish
18 min	Inn on the Cliff	1445 m to finish
19 min	Days Inn	1496 m to finish
19 min	Red Lion Hotel & Conference Center St. George	1509 m to finish
19 min	Red Roof Inn St George, UT – Convention Center	1503 m to finish
20 min	Howard Johnson by Wyndham St. George Hotel & Suites	1612 m to finish
22 min	Best Western Plus Abbey Inn	1782 m to finish
23 min	Hampton	1851 m to finish
23 min	Quality Inn	1846 m to finish
24 min	Clarion Suites	1960 m to finish
24 min	St. George Inn & Suites	1888 m to finish
24 min	The Claridge Inn	1892 m to finish
24 min	Tru By Hilton St. George	1880 m to finish
25 min	Staybridge Suites St George	1981 m to finish
26 min	Courtyard St. George	2072 m to finish
26 min	Ramada St George	2097 m to finish
27 min	TownePlace Suites St. George	2145 m to finish

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

Dates prefilled for Thursday October 1 to Sunday October 4, 2026. Those are affiliate links: they cost you nothing and they are how this guide stays free.

The morning connection

Treat the race buses as the transport system, because there isn't another one. St. George has no rail and its public transit is thin and does not exist at the hour you need it; nothing scheduled runs early enough to get you to a 3:45 a.m. bus call. The whole day is designed around one movement: buses out of Vernon Worthen Park between about 3:45 and 5:15 a.m. (some race materials list loading from 3:30 to 5:20), a 7:00 a.m. start up in Central, and a finish back at the same park. Runners are given a departure slot and told to hold to it, so build your morning backwards from your assigned time, not from the gun. Getting yourself to the start by private car is a bad idea even where it is possible: SR-18 is under traffic control, and your car would end the day 26 miles from you.

Room sorted?

Register for the 2026 St. George →on Haku

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 September 29-October 7 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.stgeorgemarathon.com before you book anything. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it fast.