My Garmin 1040 started to play up after day 2. It would turn itself off and reset. This would be a consistent theme for the rest of the event.  Essentially, when it turned itself off it deleted all my profiles and routes. I was lucky in that because of the Copeland stable discussion group (he has set up a Discord group chat for all his past and present coaches which is a rich source of useful information) I had the route stored on my phone both in Komoot and Ride With GPS.  I was able to restore the route to the Garmin, but also track it on RWGPS which proved more reliable.

When you wake up at 4am needing a pee, in the moonlight, it makes sense to think, ‘I might as well pack up and start riding’.  So, according to Strava, I started riding at 4.43am and my Garmin immediately went into USB MS mode.

I resorted to using Ride with GPS to navigate and record my progress whilst also looking up how to deal with the Garmin problem

Repeatedly advice is to not ‘faff’. Riding time needs to be maximised. So a lot of work is done on the bike whilst moving. I became adept at using the phone one handed to search on the internet or use apps such as booking.com and RWGPS.  A search revealed the Garmin had gone into Mass Storage mode and I needed to connect to a computer and Garmin Express to get it out of this mode.  I was coming into Tursi and came across a small row of shops. One of them had a nice young woman who interpreted my Google Translate Italian sufficiently to produce a laptop. I plugged in the Garmin and miraculously it came out of USB mode and I could reload the course and start using it again

For every problem there is a solution.  I may not have recorded the entire route on either Garmin or RWGPS but I was able to capture a lot and the Garmin helped me with the ‘climb’ function to know how long and roughly how hard the climbs were.  

It was a beautiful day and I found myself riding through sweeping vistas, on road and gravel.

I booked a B&B in Terranova di Pollino. When I got there the couple who ran it asked if I wanted breakfast now, when I arrived, as they asked if I was doing the 2VS and assumed I would be leaving early in the morning.  I said I would. They asked if I would prefer a sandwich? I said I would. They arrived with two large doorstep sandwiches.  I tried to eat them but had to leave a half.

I wandered out into the town and found some supplies and also a bar where `I ordered a hot chocolate which was so thick and hot it was like lava – apt eh!

 That night I woke at 2am famished. I finished off the remains of the sandwich and a small canister of Pringles.

Meanwhile I was recharging all my bits, including my legs!