"Allez Ricky"! Lightfoot delights locals on La Reunion
Last weekend top Cumbrian fell man and Salomon UK trail team member Ricky Lightfoot stormed around the 2013 Trail International du Colorado route on La Reunion island, smashing the course record to boot…
Here he gives us his thoughts on a week to remember:
Kààféélàà… Ole de la Reunion: Trail International du Colorado
Its hard to put Reunion Island into words, amazing trails, friendly people, beautiful flowers, the mountains, active volcanos, beautiful coastlines and a magical place called Mafate only accessable by foot and that’s only half of it!
Reunion Island has always been a place I’ve wanted to race, since I first saw the pictures from Le Grand Raid (Diagonale des Fous) race, the mountains looked spectacular akin to something straight out of a storey book. So when given the opportunity to go and race The Trail du Colorado I jumped at the chance.
Previously I’d never heard of the race which starts near the capitol St Denis (Sin-Deni) in the north of the Island. This year was the 3rd edition and already had capped last years entrants at over 800 pre entries which is pretty amazing considering the size of the island.
There was International invites from Mauritious, Rodrigues, Reunion Island, France, Madagascar, New Zealand and the UK as its part of a four race series. The race is organised by the local running club which has some brilliant athletes and a great set up.
I arrived in Reunion on the week leading unto the race so it gave me a chance to have a look at the route and recover from the long flight from the UK, I arrived the same day as Anna Frost who also made the trip, recently returning from an injury only a few weeks ago.
One of the organising committee of the race Jérome Desire had offered himself as a guide to the Island for the week which made our job a lot easier, there was so many places to see but getting around on some of the roads was difficult.
We got the chance to look at part of the course on the Tuesday, so we ran the middle 20km of the route starting from the small village of Dos d’Ane at 1000m (lightly translated to “donkey back”) it didn’t take too long to realise the technicality of the course but, we were assured by Jerome and Thierry that the course was fast (at this point we were doing 14min/mile).
The course was really rough, rocky and narrow which wasn’t great being 6ft 3, there was quite a few times on the route where I got a bit of a whipping off the trees and shrubs that were over hanging, all this made the going really slow, added in to the mix was the spiders, I got quite a few of them in the face. They were huge!
We also got the chance to visit Mafate, its a magical place in the mountains where the only way in is by foot of helicopter. To get there we drove up to 2000m to descend by foot 1000m into a small village called Roche Plate. There are a number of villages in Mafate which are situated in the remains of a extinct volcano, Piton des Neiges at 3070m.
The race is a mainly run on narrow single track with only a couple of sections run on open fire track, it owes to a quick course but looking at the record before hand it was roughly 10min/mile pace which sounds slow but this due to the technicality of the terrain.
A quick stop at the physio, the local Kinepodiste Cedric Tshibasu in Saint Denis on Thursday and we were ready to go, Thanks to Cedric for the great treatment, which was well and truly needed after the week we’d had.
Race day came round quick, up at 4.45am for breakfast and out of the door at 5.50am to drive up to the start just over 25 minutes away. The start was in Colorado Park at 650 meters, with the large number of runners the park was pretty full with spectators, runners and the organisation team by 6.30 who looked like they’d been working all morning to get things ready.
The sun began to rise just before the start at 7.00am, I was told the runners would go off fast and they did that! A short loop back through the start line and it was off onto the technical undulating single track, I quickly established a small lead by 5km and never looked back. It was difficult to see if anyone was chasing as there wasn’t more than 30 yards of stright trail.
The support on route was fantastic, with appearing on local t.v and in the local papers people recognised me (I guess 6ft 3 whitemen in Reunion are not that common!) and were shouting “Ricky allez”.
Once past the first aid station there was 11km of narrow single track which snaked its way through the forest with only enough room for you to run, lean either way too much and you’d get a face full of tree, a sawn off stump of a tree in the shoulder or on the other side a large drop into the trees below.
As well as watching the ground you had to keep an eye above, there was quite a lot of low lying tree branches and spider webs and being the first along the trail that morning I picked up all of them!
It helped wearing the Suunto Ambit as I knew how far to crucial parts of the course.
Once we descended through the check point at Dos d’Ane, I could hear the crowds cheering behind me so I knew the next runner was close, I had eased off subconsciously on the last 11km concentrating on the terrain. A quick Kinetica Caffeine Gel climbing out of Dos d’Ane and onto the ridge where the spectators were out in force.
This was well over half way, there wasn’t much climbing left only as the locals call it “the b*stard hills” these were a number of really steep, slippery climbs which only lasted for a few minutes, but at that time of the race they were tough!
The next section was fast once I passed the last aid station, we now traced our steps back to the finish which again descended on a narrow root bound single track, this part was probably the fastest part of the course as the couple of km’s on the fire road lead to a single track which gave a bit more room.
From 5km from the finish you could hear the race commentator and the music, a short descent on road and I was onto the last 400m, the music was loud and the finish line was lined with African dancers playing drums and dancing.
A quick interview with Jerome on the finish line told me I’d broken the course record by (3.19.06) 14 minutes and ahead of the second placed runner by over 11 minutes. A great course made even better by the support from the locals and the spectators. Thanks to Lucian, Jérome Desire, Rio, Anna, Thierry and Cedric for their help during the week.
Anna showed how strong she was after her fall on the Volcano on Thursday by finishing strong well ahead of the second placed lady. It also goes to show the depth of quality athletes in Reunion as Anna finished 39th overall.
My trip to Reunion was nearly to an end, the next day we had decided to go to the summit of the island Piton des Neiges before my long travel home later that day. We only managed to get up to 2500m as the weather was so bad, guess I’ll have to return sometime to do that one.
Thanks to Salomon for keeping me racing in the best kit, Suunto for keeping me accurate and Kinetica for keeping me going when its gets tough.
