Le Touquet is a short flight or ferry ride from England, so there are lots of English tourists. And where you find Englishmen, you find cricket.
June 25 — Bergen, Norway to Le Touquet, France
Great flying weather; bad running weather
The crew of Ryanair Flight 7239 delivered their passengers safely from Manchester to Copenhagen on June 25, 2026. I delivered myself safely from Bergen, Norway to Le Touquet, France. Unbeknownst to the Ryanair passengers, one of the pilots gave me a hand. I was often too far from land for the controllers to hear me, even when I was at 10,000 feet. That’s when relaying the message through an airline pilot way overhead comes in handy. Thanks, Ryanair!
I had good flying weather: No storm clouds, few clouds at all, and freezing levels above my altitude. But the heat on the ground in France caused some problems. The evening I arrived, I received an email with the subject line, “Message de l’organisation : Annulation du marathon des Gueules Noires.” The marathon was cancelled because of the heat. Temperatures had reached 106 degrees Fahrenheit in Paris during the week, and people had died from the heat and from drowning while trying to escape the heat, so the entire country was in a panic. It turned out that the high in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux on June 28, the planned race day, was 81 degrees Fahrenheit, so the race should have been held.
Regardless, as of Thursday, I no longer had a marathon to run on Sunday. I scrambled to find a replacement and was overjoyed to discover a Sunday race in Belgium. The entry deadline had passed, but an email to the race director was sufficient to get me in. Problem averted. Or so it seemed. I changed my travel plans, canceled my hotel reservation for the first race and made a hotel and car rental prepayment for the new race.
Early Friday afternoon, I got an email. The second marathon had been cancelled, too, also because of the heat. Did I want to run the half marathon, instead? This was bad. I am not running 26 half marathons in 26 weeks in 26 countries. That would make no sense. A half marathon is 13.1 miles; 26 doesn’t really come into it. But after exploring other alternatives, I decided to run the half. I’d already made nonrefundable arrangements, and at least I’d get some exercise. I found a marathon in Scotland that I could enter a day before my marathon on the Isle of Man, meaning I could still run 26 marathons in 26 weeks in 26 countries, just not one a week.