The date is October 24
The Whaleathon organizer site lists Saturday, October 24, 2026, for the first officially sanctioned edition of the endurance event built around Salt Lake City's Whale.
Registration is not yet open. The organizer is currently collecting email signups for the registration announcement and event updates, so a date on the calendar is confirmed while the operational details are still forthcoming.
The arithmetic of a very small course
Whaleathon turns an approximately 0.04-mile loop into a marathon by repeating it roughly 630 times. The course circles the Out of the Blue roundabout at 900 South and 1100 East until the same Whale has appeared from every possible angle and several impossible ones.
Those figures come from the organizers, not a certified course record published by Whale Fortunes. Event-day instructions and any route controls should take precedence over historic lap counts.
How the orbit began
The idea began in 2022 when Evan Service wondered aloud what it would be like to run a full marathon around the Whale. Caleb Leftwich, Jackson Bradshaw, and Wyn Barnett helped turn the joke into a route, and the first Whaleathon was completed on October 21, 2023.
KUER documented that first marathon and the community that gathered around hundreds of tiny laps. Since then, the organizer has maintained a finisher list for people who complete the challenge outside a formal event.
Watch the organizer, not the prophecy
Whale Fortunes is reporting the date, not organizing the race. The roundabout carries live traffic, and registration, route controls, participation rules, and schedule changes belong to the event organizer.
The organizer also points non-runners toward Friends of Great Salt Lake. That connection is part of the event's own invitation; Whale Fortunes has no affiliation with either organization and receives no commission.
Sources
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