RunRace USA › Tennessee › St. Jude Memphis Marathon › The weekend

The city behind the course

A Memphis 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.

FedExForum

Near mile 0.0

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 40 meters.

The Peabody Hotel

Near mile 1.3

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 45 meters.

One Commerce Square

Near mile 1.4

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 121 meters.

First Horizon Bank Tower

Near mile 1.5

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 101 meters.

Sterick Building

Near mile 1.5

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 111 meters.

Lincoln American Tower

Near mile 1.6

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 88 meters.

100 North Main

Near mile 1.7

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 131 meters.

Raymond James Tower

Near mile 3.1

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 104 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 Renasant Convention Center 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 mistake here is treating this like a race where you can stay anywhere and drive in. You cannot: the race's own parking page tells participants and spectators to be downtown and parked no later than 6 a.m. because of road closures, and the Downtown Memphis event page says the same thing with a 6:15 a.m. deadline, so the two official-ish sources disagree by fifteen minutes and you should plan to the earlier one. Downtown parking is split into color zones, and the yellow zones lock you in: vehicles must be parked by 6 a.m. and can only exit after 11:30 a.m. Red zones take no vehicles and no parked cars at all. That means a downtown room you can walk out of is worth more than a cheaper room you have to drive from, and if you do drive, where you park decides when you leave, not when you finish. Note that the 22-hotel downtown cluster near Beale Street and AutoZone Park is a pre-measured input to this dossier, not something confirmed on a page fetched here.

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 December 1-9 across 2016-2025 at the start line. Schedule, prices and expo hours were checked in 2026-08-27 and are the fields most likely to move: confirm them on www.stjude.org/get-involved/fitness-fundraisers/memphis-marathon.html before you book anything. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it fast.