The RIFT Gravel Race PT1 – The Warm Up and Intro to Iceland

Welcome to Part 1 of The Rift Gravel Race series. This is the warm-up ride, a spin-out of the legs before the main event, exploring the raw and wild beauty of Iceland.

Join me as I head out in search of waterfalls, birdlife, and big views on gravel, soaking up the landscape and shaking off the travel legs. This ride is about movement, mindset, and preparing the body for the miles to come.

📍Pre-race warm-up
🌊 Waterfalls, coastlines, and remote trails
🦅 Unexpected wildlife encounters
💭 Reflections before race day

Part 2 is where the race begins, but this is where the story starts.

All righty, friends. We’re in the airport. It’s very early in the morning and we’re on our way to Iceland. Nearly missed the flight. That would have been embarrassing. I nearly have my name called out and everything on the tanoi. I was too busy enjoying a 4.99 bottle of water. 4.99. We’ve made it to Iceland. Now, the nerve-wracking thing is making sure that the bike is here. That and throwing the camera across the floor while I’m navigating a pointlessly empty maze system. I’d love to know who comes up with these ideas. Would you look at that? It’s here waiting for me already. How efficient. Clearly, it’s just British airports that have the drama. Now then, we’re in Iceland. Welcome to the country. Now, it’s been a minute since I was last here. I was here in 2018 when I spent 3 and a half,000 km bike packing around the country and around 28 days, which was the single best experience of my entire life. big solo expedition, my first sort of big abroad solo adventure, and something to celebrate leaving the army. And it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever done. And now we’re back. We’re not doing three and a half,000 km, though. All we’re doing is walking up a hill in search of a bakery ready for the rift in a few days time. So, I’m only here for I’m literally only here for like 3 and a bit days. It’s 9:00 in the morning here. Just got settled in. Well, just dropped the bike off in Rekuic now. And then it’s a bus to the start of the race where I’m going to set up camp and set up the bike. Quick wrecky ride. Another wrecky ride tomorrow. I think there’s a social ride tomorrow afternoon as well. Then it’s the race on Saturday. Then it’s a bus back to Reuvic Saturday night which gets back pretty late. camp for about 5 hours and then get back on a plane again back to the UK all before midday on Sunday. There’s a reason for this whistle stop tour and that’s because doing a lot of these adventures spent a lot of money and I just couldn’t justify the best part of £1,000 for a week’s worth of accommodation. But that’s all right. So, I’m going to go back to a bakery that was the crown jewel of my Iceland trip last time. I went to this bakery. I was tired. I was cold. I was hungry. I was I was just knackered, malnourished, lost loads of weight. And I smelt this bakery like some sort of Mecca in the city. And I was drawn in. We’re going to go back there now cuz I want to show you what I got. Quick look at the Protestant church which is symbolic of Iceland. Not only is it I think the tallest building in the country but very sort of architecturally significant to the uh to Iceland and part of its identity. I’m fairly certain it’s named after a poet. Don’t quote me on that. The reason I do know about this is because just down here is the bakery. We found it. Here we go. Check this out. And this is the bread. Now, this is stuff that’s made in a really long strip in the baking oven. It’s called marriage bread. It’s basically this like crumble bread thing. It’s then stuffed with rhubarb jam and it is absolutely incredible. And I’ve also got a cinnamon roll which is still hot. Life is good. So, I really feel like I should just do a cycling series reviewing cinnamon buns because this thing is absolutely incredible. Up there, if not the best cinnamon roll bun I’ve ever had. All right, friends. It has been a long day. We’re doing some cross country. We have got to Vulva, which I think is how you pronounce it, which is where the start of the race is, which is over there somewhere. Scenery is absolutely amazing. I will show you around that later on, but we’re doing some cross country to get to the campsite home for the next couple of days. It’s been a long day. I’ve already missed one bus, which was great. Um, otherwise I would have been here two hours earlier. But there we go. happens. Now we’re here. Need to get the tent up, get some food, get a brew. I might have a spin out on the bike or I might go to bed. But tomorrow I want to get out on the bike, ride around, have a good time, and see what’s what. Heat. Heat. Let’s talk nutrition strategy, shall we? Now, I like to give myself options. I’m not going to take every single thing you see here, but this is the sort of pack of stuff that I’ve got. Now, we’ve gone for a full suite of Voom. I’ve gone for a couple of bars of something that’s not so sweet. I quite like these bars. Slightly more natural. Um, electrolyte Voom bars. These, if you haven’t had them before, are just absolutely mega. This specific flavor is incredible. Caffeine. Lots of caffeine. Plenty of caffeine. Variety of different flavors. hydration. I’ve gone for sachets because I’m going to fill up my water bottles. I’m going to take a couple of sachets with me because I’m not taking the hydration pack. Uh same with the fuel as well. So, I’m going to fill up a couple of bottles with fuel and then take a sache and then use the feed stations. And then for after, this is both for after tomorrow’s ride and after Saturday’s ride. It’s going to be a long old bus journey to get back to Recuic. So, uh plenty of recovery along the way. And then this is something that I’ll keep sort of in my back pocket as a break glass in case of emergency. Nutrition bar. 600 calories. plenty of protein, something that I know can sustain me for a long time if anything happens and it comes to it. It’s always good to have some emergency rations. And there we go. Nutrition stress. I got to go to the shop and get a few sort of more savory foods cuz I don’t like just eating sweet stuff. I like to have a nice mixture. Um on the tracker 360, what saved me was having an entire f catcher sandwich. So, uh I’m going to go and see what the local shop has got. Put a little bit of savory stuff in there. We’ve got plenty of space on the bike for food and things. And that’s the nutrition strategy. So, I’ve just been shopping for a couple of bits of food for the next few days. I have a feeling that has just cost me 30 quid or maybe even 40 quid. 8,500 croner, which in the immortal words of Richard Hammond when they did their trip to Norway, do you buy a Porsche or a pencil sharpener with that? Who knows? Who knows? Anyway, this is false, which is the little town that we’re in. Doing a little bit of a lap, see what’s what. There was a pool here. So, I want to try and wrecky the pool because that’s going to be good for tomorrow as a bit of recovery after a ride and ready for big day. Ultimately, it’s a it’s a sleepy little town. It’s nice. The campsite is basic. It is a coin operated shower, which is a right pain in the ass, but there we go. And it’s apparently got a pretty good cafe. So, I’m going to try and find that cafe for tomorrow morning. And then we’re going to go and eat some meat, bread, and cheese for dinner. This is a bit more Icelandic. It’s raining and it’s gray and it’s cloudy. So, when it is raining and it’s raining, it’s cloudy, there’s only one good thing we can do before we start our day, and that is get coffee. All righty, friends. It is warm-up ride time. There’s volcanoes over there. We’re going to go in search of some waterfalls today. Following a track up to a place called Thors which has many waterfalls, an amazing sort of gorge canyon thing. We’re going to go and take a look. Few issues with the bike which are now fixed which is great. Smooth as a nut. We are good to go. So let’s rock and roll shall we? Oh, I do love a good waterfall. That one back there was particularly fantastic. I feel like they would be better on this track right now cuz it is bumpy. In the life of trying to create videos on your own like this, it’s a lot of walking back and forth between places to do shoots. But I just want to stop and show you this cuz like how incredible is this volcano over the back there. There’s one over there. It’s a bit of a mouthful called Dior. Something along that lines. And that is the one if you remember back in 200 uh 2010 that exploded and then grounded all the flights in the UK. Was a massive massive eruption. That was that one over there. And then there’s another one behind this hill in the back called Heckler, which tomorrow on race day is what we’re going to go and cycle around. But I just wanted to show you this cuz it’s amazing. What a place. more place. Birds in the background are clearly not very happy that I’m here. I don’t know if it may be nesting season. Hear them in the background. There they are. I feel like I’m going to get dive bombed at some point. Reminds me of the Steo in uh video where he breaks up the fight of cookabaras. Heat up here. Heat up here. There’s a couple of things I like to do in preparation for long bears on the bike and also long runs. The bars and things that I’m going to eat because I hate when you try and open them and you get the little tag that comes off the little piece of plastic and it’s always quite difficult to keep hold of that in your pockets. is pre-opened them like this and then all you need to do is drop piece on the floor which I’m going to pick up in a minute. But having it open means that everything is accessible and then you don’t end up leaving these little bloody things everywhere. So I got five bars with me for tomorrow and I’ll do this for all of them. So I can just open them up like this and then you just rip a little tag around the edge off like that. So it’s easy to get into and do that with all of them. Makes life a lot easier when it comes to preparation. Good thing about these bars as well is cuz they’re all in chunks. Let me see if I can show you. That’s all in chunks like this. If I break them up in the pack, then as I push them out of the pack, they just come out piece by piece. And again, making life as easy as possible. When it comes to nutrition on events, challenges, things like that, even on training, you know, making things as easy as possible. This is much the same as nutrition in normal everyday life really. But making things as easy and as and as accessible as possible means you’re more likely to actually eat the stuff, consume the energy, and keep yourself in fighting order on the race or event. Because as soon as things get difficult, like this for example, if I’m struggling to open it now and I’m sat here on a comfortable chair, then I’m going to give up mid race or I’m going to burn precious time or even worse have to stop to open things up and I just don’t want to do that. But doing this makes life so much easier. And you get all your stuff prepped and ready to go.