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The French connection
Runner's World May 2001

At the Miquelon 25-K, held on a remote island near Newfoundland, you arrive by inflatable boat, run for miles on a sand dune, and finish in a lovely little town in France. Or so it seems.

Trois. Deux. Un. Allez! The starter sends us out across an isthmus toward an island in the Atlantic. We’re totally surrounded by ocean, beach grass, and sand. I can see, right away, what inspired Gérard Grignon to organize the Miquelon 25-K.

Grignon is the deputé, or government representative in Paris, for St. Pierre and Miquelon, islands off the east coast of Canada that belong to France. Yes, an unlikely remnant of the once huge and far-flung French colonial empire, just off the south coast of Newfoundland. The whole territory amounts to only 93 square miles, a speck on the map of North America.

St. Pierre, home to about 6,000 people, is both rugged and elegant—a barren, often fog-bound place with fine restaurants and wells-stocked wine shops. Miquelon is wilder and more remote. It’s concected to Langlade, a largely uninhabited island, by an isthmus of drifting sand more than 7 miles long.

The idea for a race starting on the sand dune came to Grignon nearly 3 decades ago. He was about to drive from Langlade to Miquelon to take in a local theatre production, but “just for fun” decided to lace up his running shoes instead. He ran across the dune, continued up the west coast of Miquelon Island, and 25 kilometers later arrived in the village of Miquelon in the island’s northern tip. Magnifique! What a place for a race!

The race to Miquelon, which celebrates its 18th anniversary this June, attracts around 200 runners and is undoubtedly the only event in the world in which participants arrived by Zodiac (a small, inflatable boat), run 25 kilometers, and celebrate by dancing until dawn. “It’s an adventure,” confirms a runner from Newfoundland. “Heck, it’s an adventure just getting here.”

From the town of Fortune on the tip of Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula, it’s about an hour by ferry to St. Pierre, and as soon as you step off the boat, you know you’re in France. The officers who wander through Place du General de Gaulle, the town square, are gendarmes; the cars climbing steep narrow side streets are Renaults; and the coins changing hands in shops and restaurants are francs.

From St. Pierre, travellers catch a second boat to Langlade. Because there are no docking facilities here, ferries anchor offshore and passengers are shuttled to the beach by Zodiac. On race day, we all board the 10 a.m. ferry from St. Pierre and set off under a clear sky. I’ve packed a jacket, in case the weather changes; sunscreen, in case it doesn’t; spare running shoes, in case the Zodiac takes on a wave; plus water, energy bars, and bananas. With its inter-island logistics, this race calls for more planning than most.

We reach Langlade and spread out on the beach to gear up for the 1 p.m. start. Langlade has a few summer homes, but deer, seals, and puffins have the island largely to themselves. A warm breeze drifts across the beach, and soft, fine sand is everywhere.

More than a dozen Canadian runners are here, mostly Newfoundlanders, and a handful of others have come from France. For the most part, though, this is a local run. Grignon champions the Miquelon 25-K (15 ½ miles)—and running in general—and encourages everyone to train and take part. Si vous êtes en bonne santé, vous y arriverez. If you’re in good health, you’ll make it. Many islands take up the challenge; other locals show up to help out, cheer, and party.

“The event is for everyone, not just runners,” says Claudio Arthur, 32, a sports journalist from St. Pierre with a marathon PR of 2:26. A regular at the Miquelon 25-K, Arthur set the course record of 1:22:41 in 1994. It’s a fast course, he says, if the weather is good.

But often on St. Pierre and Miquelon, it isn’t. When fog moves in, it can hunker down for days. In 1999, high winds, rain, and rough seas delayed travel to Langlade and forced a 1-hour postponement of the run. Deep water at the start area, a race organizer recalls, sent runners onto sandbanks and hills. “When the gun went off, runners came from everywhere, like bees,” she says.

Today, we’re running against the wind. At first, it’s just a mild breeze, a relief from the sun (which has pushed temperatures into the upper 50s, a balmy day at this latitude for late June). Later, however, as a pack of runners pulls ahead and vanishes into the distance, a full-blown headwind bears down upon the dune and whips sand in my face. I push on, counting kilometres, each marked by a white and yellow concrete post sunk into the sand. Twenty-three to go, 22, 21 ....

An hour later, I’m still on the dune. There’s sand in my eyes, hair, and teeth. I’m managing only a 6-minutes-per-kilometer pace. Still, I feel as if I could run forever. Maybe that’s because of the flat terrain on this section of the course. Or maybe I’m spooked by the haunting spirit of the dune. Let me explain.

This strip of sand, today almost 2 miles wide in spots, is a relatively new land formation. Shaped by the natural forces of sea and wind, and fortified by the skeletons of literally hundreds of wrecked ships (which have created a sand-trapping bulwark), the dune is a stark, wind-swept place where it takes little imagination to hear the cries of desperate men clinging to flotsam in the aftermath of a sinking.

High winds and ghosts of shipwrecks or not, the dune is charming today. It’s like being at sea, but you’re on foot. You run on hard-packed sand that’s banked with drifts of more sand sprouting wild strawberries and beach grass.

Up ahead, runners are dodging a herd of horses that has scattered across the course. When I first heard about this race, I loved the idea that it featured wild horses whose original owners had been shipwrecked centuries ago. The horses, I’m told, are actually sheltered by Michelonians during the harshest months of winter, but roam freely on the island for the rest of the year. That’s wild enough for me.

Finally, I reach the end of the isthmus, just across from a giant salt lagoon called the Grand Barachois, a protected seal-breeding ground. Now we take the hillier paved road up the western edge of Miquelon Island, where the terrain changes to peat bog and moss.

St Pierre and Miquelon may constitute a small land mass, but it’s amazingly diverse. The islands support 30 species of moss and 21 types of orchids. Berries called bakeapples grow in the peat bogs of Miquelon where the villagers pick them for jam in July and August. More than 300 species of birds make their home here, and whales and dolphins swim in the waters surrounding the islands.

I head into the final section of the run, contemplating the appeal of a bird-sighting, whale-watching lifestyle on an isolated island. Could I live here? Hmmm, maybe.

With about 5-K to go—and Claudio Arthur already revelling in his seventh Miquelon 25-K victory—I climb a hill and spot our final destination, the village of Miquelon, huddled on a flat plain in the northern tip of the island. It’s a fitting finale to the run; from my vantage point it almost looks like the end of the earth.

By the time I run into the town center, I’ve been on the course for 2 ½ hours. All the same, I feel like a celebrity. Villagers waving and cheering from windows, doorways and porches. Car horns honking. When Grignon described the Miquelon 25-K as a celebration, this is certainly what he had in mind.

Later, Grignon presides over an awards ceremony in a school gymnasium, where the mood is part race fair, part prom night, with prizes for everyone and roses all around. The real celebration, however, hasn’t even begun.

For days, I’ve heard about the méchoui, the famous barbeque. About 700 people live on the island of Miquelon, and nearly all of them have gathered under a big white tent near the center of town. Others are coming from St. Pierre. One hundred and thirty legs of lamb are roasting on an outdoor grill, and French wine is flowing freely. As the sunlight fades, a French Canadian band takes to the stage, and France’s little territory in the Atlantic toasts until dawn—to summer, to sand dunes, to running.