RUNNING HOT AND SLIGHTLY COLDER

Look further afield for your race fix

Petra Marathon JORDAN, AUGUST 26 If you’re an Indiana Jones fan this is your chance to run through the kind of scenery you saw in The Last

Crusade. Some of the final scenes were filmed at the Al Khazneh temple, a huge sandstone façade that dates back to the first century AD. You’ll be seeing plenty of that sort of thing as you make your way through the ancient city of Petra and soak up the history around you. It’s hot and the route is undulating, but the chance to have a ‘recovery float’ in the Dead Sea afterwards should be sufficient compensation.

FLIGHTS FROM… £355rtn (London Stansted to Amman) via Lufthansa.

WHILE YOU’RE THERE… Take a camel ride across part of the vast Wadi Rum desert, which doubled for Mars in the Matt Damon film The Martian (wadirumjeeptours.com). petra-desert-marathon.com Helsinki Marathon FINLAND, AUGUST 12 There’s no getting up at an ungodly hour to ram down your porridge for this race: it starts at a very civilised 3pm and takes you on a two-lap tour of the Finnish capital. You’ll hug the Baltic coastline for much of the route as you hop between some of the 315 islands that make up the city. It’s flat, the crowds are superb and you can even arrange for your own fuel to be waiting for you en route.

FLIGHTS FROM… £173rtn (Heathrow to Helsinki) via Finnair.

WHILE YOU’RE THERE… Go and have a potter round the vast 19th-century Old Market food hall where you’ll find merchants flogging everything from cheeses, cakes and spices to seafood and Finnish delicacies such as Mustikkapiirakka (blueberry pie, obviously). helsinkicitymarathon.fi/en