Most "best marathons for beginners" lists rank races on the course. This one ranks them on whether you can get a bed and reach the start without anything going wrong, which is the part that actually ruins a first marathon.
Every figure comes from a measurement taken for one of our guides on 4 August 2026. Nothing is estimated. A race we have not measured does not appear, however well known it is.
- 96Easiest — Dublin
- 40Hardest — Loch Ness
- 4of 23 rated demanding
Lodging ease, easiest first
Higher is easier. Score combines rooms left, walking distance and transport dependency, the weights are published below.
The workings
Every input, so you can disagree with the weighting and re-rank it yourself. Sub-scores are 0–100.
| Race | Rooms left | Walk | Morning | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DublinDublin 2 | 95.3% | 0.34 km | Walk | 96 |
| TokyoShinjuku | 96.2% | 0.8 km | Walk | 95 |
| Cape TownGreen Point precinct | 82.3% | 0.29 km | Walk | 91 |
| Walt Disney WorldEPCOT resort area | 96%Cheaper than the control weekend; median 0.88× | 1.09 km | Assisted | 86 |
| EdinburghOld Town | 88.6% | 0.5 km | Assisted | 85 |
| Two OceansNewlands / Rondebosch | 89.4%City-wide figure; the southern-suburbs pocket is much thinner | 2.17 km | Walk | 85 |
| Gold CoastSouthport | 75.7%Early July is Queensland school holidays; premium is partly seasonal | 1.08 km | Walk | 85 |
| HonoluluCentral Waikiki | 82.6% | 1.94 km | Walk | 84 |
| PhiladelphiaLogan Square | 70.3% | 0.94 km | Walk | 84 |
| Twin CitiesDowntown Minneapolis | 77.9% | 0.73 km | Assisted | 80 |
| Big SurCarmel-by-the-Sea | 93.5%Big Sur itself holds four properties in any week, race or not | 0.27 km | Mandatory | 79 |
| ChicagoThe Loop | 47.3% | 0.9 km | Walk | 75 |
| AthensKoukaki | 83.6% | 0.38 km | Mandatory | 74 |
| New YorkMidtown | 78.6%Saturday–Monday only; adding the Friday returns nothing | on it | Mandatory | 74 |
| Marine CorpsRosslyn | 62% | 0.67 km | Assisted | 74 |
| BerlinPotsdamer Platz | 47.9% | 1.71 km | Walk | 71 |
| SydneyNorth Sydney | 37.2% | 1.44 km | Walk | 68 |
| ValenciaRuzafa | 23.8% | 1.8 km | Walk | 61 |
| ComradesPietermaritzburg | 2.3%Score assumes you get one of the two; most people end up in Durban with a pre-dawn transfer | on it | Walk | 61 |
| Grandma'sCanal Park / downtown Duluth | 39.6% | 0.49 km | Mandatory | 56 |
| BostonCommon-side | noneNo continuous Sat–Tue stay available anywhere | 0.27 km | Mandatory | 41 |
| LondonSouth Bank rail corridor | 77.2% | 6.85 km | Mandatory | 40 |
| Loch NessInverness centre | 12.2% | 1.5 km | Mandatory | 40 |
How the score is built
Three inputs, weighted. We are publishing the weights because they are a judgement and yours might differ.
- Rooms left — 40%. The share of an ordinary control weekend's Booking.com supply still available for race weekend. Control weekends were picked to avoid public holidays; that check caught the UK May bank holiday for London and German Unity Day for Berlin, either of which would have distorted the result.
- Walk — 35%. Straight-line distance from the zone we recommend to the decisive point, the place with a deadline attached, which is not always the start line. At Boston that is the Charles Street bus loading area, not Hopkinton.
- Morning — 25%. Whether your race morning depends on something you do not control.Walk means nothing can be late. Assisted means the organiser runs transport both ways, so a miss is recoverable.Mandatory means one provided service is the only way in, or your slot is pre-booked and binding.
What the ranking is not
It is not a ranking of races. Boston sits near the bottom and is the most prestigious marathon in the world; Tokyo sits at the top and is a World Marathon Major. This measures one narrow thing — how hard it is to sleep somewhere that works and get to the start without a dependency, and a first-timer who has never done any of it is the person that matters most to.
It is also a snapshot. Availability moves, and the absolute percentages will drift. The ordering is more durable than the numbers, because it is mostly driven by geography and organiser policy, which do not change between seasons.
Two rows carry a caveat rather than a clean percentage.Boston has no continuous race-weekend stay available at any property — individual nights are bookable, the weekend is not, so it scores zero on rooms. New York is scored on a Saturday-to-Monday stay, because adding the Friday returns nothing.
Know when your race's booking window opens
Accommodation for most big races moves within days of acceptances going out — often seven months before race day. We'll tell you when yours is about to open, and what to book first.
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