Weather beats Lightfoot at Charberton
Ricky Lightfoot
Following some great results in Europe over the last few months (including a superb win at Zergama), Ellenborough runner Ricky Lightfoot made the trip to France to take on the Charberton Trail Marathon (Aug 2).
Forming part of the 2009 Skyrunner® World Series’ Trial series, the race, in the Montgènevre region of France, is a tough race taking in almost 3000m of elevation and descent. Ricky’s third position ensured valuable points as a counter in the Skyrunner® World Series which is based on the best three World Series’ results and one World Series Trial result.
Col du Charberton
However, all is not as it seems when you glance at the results. Here Ricky reveals all (exclusively to MST), showing how changes in weather in the highest parts of Europe can be sudden and extreme, and races are not always as they seem:
The Charberton Marathon was a bit of a disaster weather-wise! The race was meant to be a marathon but we only ended up doing about 10miles due to the bad weather, first it got shortened and we missed the main top which was Charberton (3136m) and we Just went over the Col Du Charberton (2800m) I think at this point it is one of the coldest I have been in a race, luckily I had my Salomon windproof!
To be basking in 30 degrees+ of sunshine the day before and the day after, this was unexpected to say the least with 2-3ft of snow falling on the tops…
Three of us had clearly broken away at this point and reached the top of the Col together, Lizeaga gained a slight lead and with the bad weather was quickly out of sight. I was happy to let him go knowing we still had a long way to go, and he hadn’t beat me before.
Charberton Fort ruins
As we came to the check point in Claviere the rain was torrential, I ran through the check with Larger and we were quickly pounced on by the race organizers, we thought they were just getting out the way and tried to dodge them but they were saying “no more, no more” and we eventually realized the race had ended with only 10 miles in!
All in all I was really disappointed with the result, and not knowing we were finishing at Claviere didn’t help either. However, organizers made a good decision to end the race, quite a few people were hospitalized with the beginnings of hypothermia, but everyone managed to get down safe-with the excellent organisation.
I will defiantly go back to have another go some time, I managed to get to the top of the Charberton the next day where there is an old fort on the very top- impressive!
