The Rift 200k – An Unexpected Story

Not every story goes the way we want—and this is one of those stories. I traveled all the way to Iceland to race The Rift 200K: one of the most remote, stunning, and brutal gravel races in the world. But from flight delays to fatigue, things didn’t unfold like I hoped. And maybe… that’s the point.

This video isn’t about the finish line. It’s about the ride. The terrain. The struggle. The unexpected beauty. The mental battle. The small moments that made it worth it anyway. I didn’t walk away with a PR or a big result—but I did walk away with a renewed mind.

Before the race, I wrote four words on my number plate:
“Have fun. Thank God.”
Those words carried me through, and they still do.

In this video:
🌋 The full Rift 200K breakdown
🚴‍♂️ Raw Icelandic highlands and race footage (full raw footage on channel)
🎙️ A real, honest story of what happens when a big race doesn’t go to plan
📍No perfect ending. Just the journey.

📍 About The Rift 200K:
The Rift is a 200km gravel race through the black lava fields and wild highlands of Hvolsvöllur, Iceland. Featuring everything from fast rolling roads to glacial river crossings, volcanic climbs, and relentless winds, it’s one of the most scenic and savage races on the planet.

💬 Comment below: Have you ever had a race (or trip) that didn’t go to plan but still left an impact? I’d love to hear your story.

🧡 Like / Subscribe for more real race stories, cinematic bike films, and behind-the-scenes looks at the highs and lows of the gravel life.

Sponsor Links (discount codes on Instagram):
Mach1 Performance – https://mach1-performance.com/coaching
Lauf Cycles – https://www.laufcycles.com/
Giordana Apparel – https://giordanacycling.com/
Dawn to Dusk – https://dawntodusk.bike/
USWE – https://uswe.com/
Garbaruk Components – https://global.garbaruk.com/
Flow Formulas – https://flowformulas.com/
Bike Tires Direct – https://biketiresdirect.com/
Handup Gloves – https://handupco.com/
KASK Helmets – https://kask.com/
KOO Sunglasses – https://kooworld.cc/

#bikes #gravelracing #cycling #iceland #therift

We all come to races like this hoping for the perfect story, the clean buildup, the peak form, the triumphant finish. But sometimes the story doesn’t go that way. [Music] Sometimes the plane turns around mid-flight. [Music] Sometimes the legs don’t show up. [Music] And sometimes the race that you trained months for becomes something else entirely [Applause] at the rift. I didn’t get to race the way that I had planned. I didn’t get to make the film that I had laid out for months. But maybe that’s the point. Some days aren’t about performance. They’re about letting go and about finding joy in the unexpected. Finding joy not in something that we have built up ourselves, but finding joy in the simple beauty of God’s creation. This isn’t the story I thought I’d tell, but it certainly is still a good one. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Well, just an explosive morning in Iceland as a volcano erupted in the southwest part of the country. Here is video from this outbreak near Iceland’s capital, which has seen an increase in activity over the last few years. Officials say while this is a small eruption, people have been evacuated from the Blue Lagoon. It’s a popular spa resort that you may have heard of or even been to. There’s so many carrots in Heat up here. We finally made it. Crazy drive up to the race town. Crazy travel. I’m exhausted, but we’ve got a ride in a little bit, so we got to get this thing built. [Music] from like Unbound, I guess. So, I’m like I’m like I’m going to have to order some dubnitoalls like next week. Yeah, there’s a bunch of them. I think it’s like it just looks really bad, but I don’t think it’s actually like past the casing cuz otherwise there be otherwise they’d be flat. Yeah, exactly. This is the same tire I flatted last week. [Applause] [Music] [Music] Just wanted to take a quick second to thank La Cycles, our bike sponsor, for putting us up here. We were staying right there right near the start, which was super awesome. So, big thanks to them. [Music] [Music] Yeah, probably not for the whole thing. [Music] All right, so let’s recap the story so far. So far, we have tried to fly into Iceland. We’ve gotten turned around on a flight to Iceland. We got a few nights of bad sleep in between all that. Then we finally got to Iceland. And now we’ve been here for a total of about 4 hours. We’ve done one pre-ride, not even on the course, so we have no idea what that looks like. We only have a little bit of time before we have to go to sleep to wake up at a reasonable time for the race. We are close to the start, which is a perk, but that doesn’t help with the fact that our rice cooker caught on fire. I have no dinner. Nah, my manager, gave me some rice. Shout out to Nina. I bought an avocado at the store. We couldn’t read what was different about the avocado. There was one avocado that was $200, one that was $800, and apparently the $200 avocados stay green until the next morning and aren’t even that brown after the race the next day. So definitely buy the $200 avocados. So with all that in mind, we have about one night of bad sleep left to get before the start in the morning. going into this, not knowing how the legs will react after such a chaotic week and not knowing where my mind will be after such a stressful week. So, as you can tell, it was raining on race morning, which left me a bit of a dilemma as to what to wear. I went with a bit of an unconventional option with shorts and a winter jacket. I knew that it was going to be colder once we got up into the highlands, so I didn’t want to be cold, but I also didn’t want to be too hot, so I went with this combo knowing that I could unzip the jacket to cool off. There will be links in the description to all of this gear. Thank you so much to all of our sponsors who make this possible. [Music] And to tell you the truth, there are times [Music] Three, two, one. Unleash the beat. [Music] So, as we started off here, I decided that I might as well go out fast and see what I did have in the legs. Knowing that I probably wouldn’t have much, I thought it’d still be fun to see how far I could make it with this front group. I like this format of start where we all start together, the pros and the amateurs. It makes it fun. When editing this, I wrote a whole script explaining this route, but I kept rewriting it. And every time I rewrote it, I realized that there’s not much I can do to explain what this course is. I can tell you how bumpy all the rocks were. And I can tell you how long it felt, even though it was only 200 km. I can tell you how I think it was harder than Unbound, but ultimately I don’t think any of that comes close to seeing it for yourself. I can only hope that this video can communicate some of the beauty of this route, but I would certainly encourage anyone that wants to see it more to go buy a plane ticket to Iceland right now. It’s definitely worth it. So, with that said, I’ll let this route speak for itself. [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat up here. [Music] Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] So, at this point, I am about halfway through, and on paper, it looks like all I have to do now is make it a little bit further until the final climb, which looks pretty smooth on the profile. while and then do this one final climb and then the last 30 mi should be downhill. But because of how steep this next climb was and because of how rough all of the descending is, it took me almost 2 hours longer coming back than it did going out. I am still having a lot of fun though. Yeah. Easily just as hard or harder than unbound. I’ve done unbound. This is hard. Yeah, I did unbound this year. I did last year. Unbound. Ground was in pretty good shape. Yeah. [Music] Jumping in one more time here to just acknowledge the fact that I am riding my bike on a volcano right now. I never thought that I would say that, but I am riding my bike on a volcano for the second time this year because I climbed Holly in January. So yeah, bikes on volcanoes. We can do that now. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat [Applause] [Music] up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat up [Music] here. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] There was a finish line out there somewhere, but that’s not where the story ends. Because the most meaningful miles aren’t the ones at the end. They’re the ones where you wanted to quit and didn’t. Where everything hurt, but the view made you smile. Where you remembered why you came in the first place. No, this race was not the perfect race, but it was real. And sometimes that’s enough. Let me leave you with the four words that I wrote on my number plate. The only four words that I needed to remember on this day. Have fun. Thank God.