If you surf around enough on this site (or maybe it was a past Measurement News)I think you will find an account by Bob Thurston and another by Ron Scardera. In any case, I recall that they both found that there was a police change to the marathon course that was told to the organizers on race day, Both rode around on their bikes and found solutions that permitted the course to be OK.
It would be asking a lot for them to get all the paperwork done before the race was over.
Sometimes we have to deal with things as they are, and not as we might wish them to be.
I hate to see us getting like the US congress, passing laws right and left. We are a tiny group of people, and by and large we know what to do. Have we really got a problem to solve, or is it just a need to see things nice and tidy?