Whatever happened to the DC Marathon?

The New York City Marathon is an important image booster for the city. Increasingly, so is the Baltimore Marathon, the "Baltimore Running Festival," which occured last weekend. The NYC Marathon touches every borough, while the "DC" Marine Corps Marathon travels the National Mall, it doesn't venture out any further into the city. Its course covers a lot of ground in Virginia.

Baltimore Marathon course map. Baltimore Sun Graphic.

Map of DC.

Baltimore Sun photo.

Baltimore Sun photo.

Baltimore Sun photo.

Of course, not everyone agrees with the promotional aspects, such as this letter to the editor in today's Baltimore Sun:

Marathon makes mess of city traffic, Henry Cohen, Baltimore

On Sunday, The Sun had several articles on the Baltimore Marathon of the day before ("Antics keep wacky pace to long race," Oct. 16), and not one of them had a word about the horrendous traffic jams that the marathon caused this year, as it does every year. Thousands of cars were stopped or forced to endure bumper-to-bumper traffic for long periods because, once again, the city did not plan adequately for the event.

Big banners should go up all over the city the day before the marathon, alerting drivers to stay off the roads. Those roads that are to be blocked should have signs warning drivers not to enter them. Better yet, the city should close Interstate 83 and confine the runners to it. Some of us have shopping and errands to do on Saturdays, and consider them more important than the desire of a bunch of jerks to run through the streets.