Records That’ll Make Your Head Spin…

… literally and figuratively! In recent years, an unusual type of record has emerged in the running world. The latest belongs to 25-year-old Austrian Rainer Predl, who completed 3,516 laps around the viewing platform of the Podersdorf lighthouse in Austria. The equivalent of a marathon! In France, more precisely in Lille, Olivier Maria made headlines last April by covering the classic distance around the Porte de Paris roundabout. We caught up with him.

Originally, the marathon was a straight line between two points, the cities of Marathon and Athens in Greece. In our modern age, which sometimes seems to be going around in circles, passionate runners have invented the marathon by running in circles. Over the past few years, in Salt Lake City, Utah, near Lake Podersdorf in Austria and in Lille, runners have completed the iconic distance in truly extreme conditions, with a healthy dose of madness. But always with a passion that deserves respect.

Discovering the “Whaleathon” in Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City is known for its snow and ski competitions, and perhaps for the Great Salt Lake, the largest lake in the United States. Now you can also remember it as the home of a group of friends who run around a roundabout. Four friends used to dream up adventures together. They eventually ditched their bikes and took on a rare kind of marathon. The “Whaleathon”, or “Baleinethon” in French. In the middle of the roundabout where the four big kids set off stands a huge whale’s tail. On October 21, 2023, Wyn Barnett, Jackson Bradshaw, Evan Service and Caleb Leftwich took on the “Whaleathon”: 630 laps of the 64-metre roundabout, adding up to the famous 42 kilometres. To protect their joints, the four runners regularly switched direction. There was no record at stake, but it was still quite a feat, and the four friends documented it in a 50-minute video released at the start of the year, which you can watch here. An ode to friendship that gives meaning to a performance that otherwise seems completely pointless! A touch of Stranger Things.

Rainer Predl, the man who runs in circles

Rainer Predl is truly unlike anyone else. For years, this extreme runner has racked up incredible yet deeply unsettling achievements, right on the edge of madness: running on top of a wind turbine, covering 100 kilometres on Vienna’s Danube Tower, running on mining dump trucks, Rainer Predl has numerous unusual records listed by Guinness World Records. His latest? On May 11, this extreme runner completed a marathon on the upper platform of the lighthouse at Lake Podersdorf. The space was so small that he had to run 3,516 laps to complete his feat. Five hours, 37 minutes and 29 seconds running in circles! To keep himself going, the Austrian linked his performance to donations for Sterntalerhof, a children’s hospice in Austria. You may smile at Rainer Predl’s achievements, but you can’t deny his iron mindset.

Olivier Maria in Lille: running a marathon in circles to celebrate 20,000 followers

In Lille on April 12, 2025, road users taking the Porte de Paris roundabout were treated to a strange spectacle, if they took the time to look. To celebrate reaching 20,000 followers on Instagram, runner Olivier Maria took on a challenge inspired by the Whaleathon: run a marathon around the Porte de Paris roundabout, completing 262 laps of a loop estimated at 158 metres along the chord, for a total of 42.195 km. Mad! Marathons.com couldn’t track down the four friends from Salt Lake City but Olivier Maria gave us a few words before heading back out to train for his next “madness”: 1,200 km from Dunkirk to Marseille next autumn. “I started running a lot of marathons in training as part of the preparation for that challenge. Then I wanted to find something fun to celebrate reaching 20,000 followers on Instagram. At first, I thought about ‘drawing’ a course on Strava, like some people do, and then the roundabout idea came to me. I thought running a marathon like a ‘hamster’ was pretty funny, and it fits social media. In fact, for now, people are contacting me more about this than about my 1,200-kilometre challenge. As for April 12, I was honestly fed up after three kilometres. Then my brain switched off and I let the scenery roll by. It was a bit like running on a short athletics track…” We’re glad we managed to track Olivier down. Because behind this light-hearted, bizarre challenge is a passionate runner with a genuine philosophy, which he champions, among other things, through his use of running sandals. “In my races and challenges, I try to highlight an authentic way of life. It’s about ecology, or at least thinking about ecology. For a long time, I wanted to shout about it from the rooftops. Now I’m trying to embody that commitment as best I can. I think that’s more powerful.” Message received loud and clear, Olivier. Marathons.com will be taking a closer look at the Lille runner’s minimalist approach in the coming days…

From running around a roundabout to a personal philosophy, there’s only one step!