At noon on Sunday 19 April, a small, international field of multi-day runners set off on the first of the 2026 Sri Chinmoy Ten-, Six- and Three-Day Races in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, New York. The event, organised by the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team USA from its Queens base, is the oldest continuously running ten-day race in the world, dating back to 1977, and uses a 0.75-mile tarmac loop around the park for what amounts to 240 hours of continuous effort. Runners have until noon on Wednesday 29 April to accumulate mileage, with a dedicated lap-counting station staffed around the clock and a race announcer calling each runner's name as they pass.
The ten-day distance carries a quietly serious prestige on the multi-day calendar. A finisher who averages 100 miles a day clears the 1,000-mile target that defines the event's upper tier, and roughly one or two runners in a typical year nudge past 1,100 miles. Course conditions in Flushing Meadows in late April are usually favourable — daytime highs in the 50s and 60s Fahrenheit, chilly but rarely freezing overnight — though the loop's unsheltered character means any heatwave or sustained rain can rewrite strategy quickly. The race shares its start with the companion Three-Day 72-Hour event and the Six-Day race, giving newcomers an entry point into the multi-day format without committing to the full ten.
The 2026 field includes entries from Austria, Germany, Finland, Japan and the United Kingdom alongside a strong contingent of Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team members from across the US. Multi-day veterans Ashprihanal Aalto of Finland and Kaneenika Janakova of Slovakia, both past winners of the team's signature 3,100-mile Self-Transcendence Race, have historically used the ten-day as a spring form-check, and the 2026 entry list again includes several names with 1,000-mile multi-day history. On the women's side, Surasa Mairer of Austria, a three-time ten-day champion in Flushing Meadows, is among those drawing attention on race-eve entry boards.
The Sri Chinmoy team's multi-day programme has grown steadily since the 1970s and is now one of the world's largest organisers of endurance events, ranging from the 3,100-mile race to shorter fixed-time formats such as the 24-hour and 12-hour Flushing Meadows events held later in the year. Support for the race is almost entirely volunteer-led, with handlers, cooks, lap-counters and medical support drawn from the wider running and meditation community that has grown around the team. The event's character — meditative, quiet, low-stakes in the social-media sense — has made it a somewhat unlikely draw for ultrarunners looking to separate from the UTMB-World-Series-branded ecosystem that now dominates trail-ultra coverage.
Public access to the race is open throughout its ten days, and the team encourages visitors and families to walk the loop, sit with runners at meal breaks, or simply count laps from the counting tent. Live results and leaderboards are published online at the Sri Chinmoy races portal, with updates at the end of each 24-hour segment. The 2026 edition closes at noon on Wednesday 29 April; Running Lookout will publish a results round-up once the ten-day, six-day and three-day finishers are confirmed.