The Two Volcano Sprint 2022

Prequel

When I applied to do the 2VS I assumed it would be like previous years: about 1000km in distance and abundant climbing.  My application was accepted.  Then Juliana Buhring, the race director, announced a new route of 1600km and 35000m of climbing.  If I had known the distance and climbing involved I probably would not have applied but I had paid my registration.

Closer to the start I hired a coach, Niel Copeland, and his input transformed my preparation. Then two weeks before the event I got Covid. I gave myself until the Saturday, 5 days before the start, to decide. On the Friday I went for a ride and felt ok. Game on!

October 10th

At 6.30am I exited my sister in law’s house in Wimbledon as quietly as possible, lugged my bike in the box out to the waiting cab and put it in the back.  Oliver, the driver, stopped to let me get cash from an ATM to pay as he said he couldn’t accept a card.  Processing the bike box at Heathrow was easier than I imagined so I was able to have a full Pret breakfast  and buy a sandwich for the flight.

Naples

Retrieving the bike at Naples was really simple and I found it fairly easy to assemble the bike in the forecourt of the airport.

I then, tentatively, set out to find my B&B in Ercolano.  The roads were rough and potholed, the streets felt poor but my B&B turned out to be in a nice part of Ercolano, just up the road from the ruins of Herculaneum.  It took a bit of time to find out how to get into the B&B. It was on the first floor of a set of apartments. Someone exiting the building spoke a little French, so we could communicate, and found the owner to let me in. The room was clean with automated music which came on as I entered the en suite! There were also changing lights around the head of  the bed on the wall….it did worry me a little but I am fairly sure it was just eccentric lighting not advertising….

The 2VS WhatsApp group got busy and I planned to join others for a pizza. As I discovered, everything on this event is uphill. I walked up a narrow, steep, cobbled road to find the Pizza Restaurant wondering how safe was I on these dark, poorly lit backstreets. 

Most of the people who turned up to eat had not done the event before but all of them looked thin and fit and younger than me.

As I walked down the dark, narrow street to my B&B I wondered what I had let myself in for.