I have a bit of a secret: I didn’t really know if I intended to race The Rift Abyss in Iceland when I signed up for it back in early December. I’ve never done The Rift before, but I’ve always noticed and admired photos of it that float around every year at about this time. Images of brightly colored riders criscrossing black volcanic landscapes certainly pique the imagination, as do vivid river crossings, rolling green moss covered hills, and with glaciers towering over it all in the background.
The Rift has existed for a number of years as an event, with multiple distances capping out at the 200k, 124 mile version. While impressive and daunting, the distances weren’t quite long enough to justify to travel time and cost of getting over to Iceland to ride it – until this year. For 2026 the race offered a new 330k, 205 mile distance, and this is what put me over the top.
205 miles of Iceland’s incredible terrain, through it’s unpredictable and possibly tempestuous weather, all under a sun that never fully set, that just seemed like the ingredients for a genuine adventure. When the announcement hit my inbox I really didn’t know if I could go, or would go, but I knew at the time that if I didn’t act soon, the race would probably fill up, and I would miss the opportunity to participate in the first running. First event runnings are always special because there are no race reports, there is no great course intel, and the sense of unknown is as high as it will ever be for the event. In first year events the organizers often don’t even know how long to estimate for course completion times, or how the riders will love or hate the course. In first year events, the riders are lab rats.
I clicked signup, added the event to my work calendar, and got on with my life. The race was exciting and new, but at the same time was also a bit too far in the future to think about. There would be seven months of riding, training, racing, and goofing around to be had before mid-July rolled around.
Funny thing: Mid-July was here before I knew it, and besides being genuinely exhausted from a half year of said riding, training, racing, and goofing around, I arrived at Rift about as ready as I could possible be. The numbers were good, but the sensations were a bit crispy! My good friend David had also taken the plunge and signed up in December, so we made the pilgrimage to this bubbling, steaming volcanic island together, excited for whatever adventure it would dish up for us.
Upon disembarking from our plan at the airport in Iceland, the first adventure that greeted us was the fact that our bikes had never boarded the plane in Denver. We could see their little icons via the air tags that we had packed with each bike, just sort of taunting us from thousands of miles away. This was a tough pill to swallow, and our stress levels went through the roof. I kept friends and followers updated on the situation in my Instagram stories online, and it wasn’t long before Berger from Lauf Cycles sent me a message offering to lend us some Lauf bikes for the event if needed. Berger knows that I’m at the helm at Rodeo, and it was incredibly kind of him to make such a hospitable offer to a “competitor”. We decided on a two-pronged bike strategy. We walked the streets of Reykjavik for a few hours before making a last minute booking at a hotel near the airport so that we could quickly grab the bikes the next morning if they did arrive. David usually spearheads planning on trips like this, and the hotel that he booked ended up being one of the highlights of the trip! It featured its own set of mineral hot springs, spa-like surroundings, and a bottomless gourmet breakfast beyond our wildest dreams. We scored quite a deal on the hotel also, beceause we booked it an hour before check-in and booked directly through the hotel. Travel hack!
As I steamed myself in the hot springs, stress, anxiety, and visible signs of aging all faded away for a few dozen precious minutes. The bikes didn’t matter, the race nerves didn’t matter, the weather didn’t matter. I just sat there and had a semi-out-of-body experience about how far away this world felt from the real life grind of Denver, and work, and the stresses that come with it all. We weren’t on the bike yet, but iceland was already delivering!
By midnight that night we could see from our Airtags that the bikes had boarded the plane, and we drifted to sleep with visions of volcanoes and black dirt tracks in our head.
The next morning our airport bike pickup was incredibly smooth, and other than the fact that they compeltely forgot to load our bikes in the first place, the Iceland Air crew couldn’t have done a better job handling the situation with a certain level of care that I don’t see from larger airlines.
On to the race, then!
The race was set to begin at 8:30 PM that night. I use the term “night” loosely here, because there is no true night in Iceland in mid-July. The sun does beat a retreat from its high point in the sky, and it does toy with the horizon for hours and hours and HOURS on end, creating unbelievable endless sunsets and sunrises in the process. The the sun never goes more than 4 degrees below the horizon, nor does the sky ever go completely dark. Our mental clocks, already utterly confused by the jet lag, were not hopelessly lost in a space-time warp that didn’t even deserve an attempt at reconciling. As David and I lined up for the start, we might have been tired, we might have been sleepy, we might have been wired. There was just simply no way to know. Throw a bit of adrenaline into that starting line smoothie, and chaos reigned. Lovely stuff!
The race was off, and with it a dozen or two riders out of our group of about 50 racers took off in a puff. This being the first running of the event, the organizers had wisely limited the field size. The demographic was a solid mix of sleek, youthful top-end racers, plump gravel dads moms, youtube vloggers, influencers, a few mountain bikers, and some people who looked a little bit lost as to what exactly they were about to attempt to do. Better said: It was about the same as any other “gravel” event, but minus the denim jorts. I saw no denim jorts the entire trip.
Early paved miles passed quickly. In the distance, impossibly green, impossibly magical looking mountains beckoned. We, the fifty, would be riding into those mountains, the Icelandic Highlands, on a loop that passed through high valleys, forded endless rivers, brushed up against massive glaciers, sped past countless sheep, and tested the limits of what anyone could responsibly call “gravel”.
The group stretched out. The leaders disappeared from site. David and I chatted a bit. We had different priorities and strategies. David wanted to immerse in the experience of it all, and even had plans to detour from the route about 125 miles in and visit some hot springs mid-race. I, on the other hand, had it in my mind to race as hard as I could, with hopes of not destroying my 47 year old engine in the excitement of each passing moment. I want to do well in races like this still, as much as anyone can hope for, but I’m less and less sure of what “well” means these days.
David and I drifted apart, but we both kept our phones out and cameras rolling, because we inteded to merge our videos and create a nice reel of memories of the event for posterity.
Soon we were lost in the place that is Iceland. No matter how any describes this place to you, there really isn’t anything that can quite prepare you for the entirety of what Iceland is. Back in Denver my world is hot, it is dry, it is frayed around the edges from the heat of summer, and the air hangs with the smoke of wildfires in recent weeks. Iceland is the yang to that yin. Iceland is damp, saturated with a only a few but extremely vivid colors, and it is defined by the contrasts of dramatic peaks and valleys. Rivers cut through everything and everywhere, either from natural water shooting up from thousands of feet below, or from rain, or from glaciers and snow melting in the 50 degree (farenheit) summer heat. Iceland is Lord Of The Rings meets Planet Of The Apes meets some fantasy planet out of Star Wars – inhabited by both elves and the descendents of Vikings. Superlative, Superlative, Superlative. I’m not sure why I even try. You really just have to be there.
“Wow. WHAT. Whoa!”
Audible gasps emanated repeatedly from small groups of racers that I started finding myself with in those first hours. You’d think you had seen the most amazing thing ever, and then you would crest a hill, revealing a vista even more beautiful than the last.
My pace was measured but purposeful. I started slow and built into a rythm that I hoped to be able to sustain for 200 miles. Even in the middle of that physical effort I was completely disconnected from it at times. The beauty simply carried me along, distracted and semi-euphoric about the moments that I was living in and racing through.
The river crossings kept everyone on their toes. Some rivers you could ride. Other rivers would sweep you away. It wasn’t always easy to tell which was which. In the months before the race I had considere Gore-Tex socks. I had considered waders, even. I schemed about how to keep my feet dry. By race day all of that had gone out the window and I fell back to the tried and true formula of wearing thick wool socks for the race. Wool insulates when wet. Thick wool lofts well and traps heat better than thin socks. A mere half hour into the race it was clear that my feet would never again be dry until I crossed the finish line, so I put the idea of it out of my mind and embraced my new status as an amphibious animal. The cold of each plunge only lasted for a half minute or two, and then the heat returned to my feet each time, even to the point of being toasty and warm, right until the next river arrived and the whole process started from zero once more.
“Scheiße!” came the sound from a German racer ahead of me. I was hours in and had just entered a very dry, very deep, very black sand section of the course. Tire tracks in the sand in front of me washed out left and right. I had heard tell of this section. Bergur had warned us to run as large a tire as we possibly could. I had mounted 29×2.4, something only recently possible on my TD4.2 with Spork 4 and the Laid Back rear sliders. This tire size seems utterly absurd in real life. Nobody needs a 2.4 on a gravel bike, but I ran it anyway, more curious than anything else about how they would feel on a rugged course. I had also specifically mounted them because of the miles of deep black sand that we would ride through in this section. My bike held its line. It took a mix of skill, equipment, willpower, and denial to keep my path straight and true, but it all worked. I felt like I was surfing, floating. I made fantastic time and soon put many minutes into the group that I had been riding close to. I felt a sense of pride, not because I’m a good bike rider, but because the bike was doing such a good job helping me overcome these tough conditions. It was a sense of pride in one’s own horse.
After the long sand section next came what must have been a one or two mile water crossing, which was directly melting from the nearby Mýrdalsjökull glacier. As I plunged into the water, my senses spun around me. The ground was no longer fixed or firm. The water was moving all around me, and it reflected the static sky at the same time. I grasped to control my reflexes. “Steady as she goes, Stephen. No sudden moves”
This continued for a good long while. I rode in shallow glowing water, found a soft sand bar, looked for the next post that marked the “road”, then plunged forward towards it, back into the next section of the endlessly wide river.
I was riding in a dream!
The dream ended, and terra firma returned. My motor was running well, the course turned south. The wind picked up.
The weather in Iceland can be anything this time of year. It can be clear and beautiful. It can be foggy, misty, spitting rain, or pouring. It can snow. You really had to be ready for anything both mentally and in terms of the gear that you carried. I was over packed: Extra layers, rain jacket, spare socks, spare gloves. I stripped everything excess off within miles of starting. The cool but not cold Icelandic twilight kept my core temperature at exactly my favorite temperature for the entire race. What a gift! I’ve spent many races overheated and at the edge of heat stroke. But here, that kid who grew up riding bikes in the cool, rainy Pacific Northwest of Washington State felt entirely at home. Hello darkness, my old friend!
Our weather could not have been better for The Rift. The skies were almost entirely clear, but enough clouds remained to capture and enhance the eternal sunset and sunrise. The wind picked up here and there, but it was never an issue the entire race. I can’t belive how lucky / blessed we all were out there. We sampled the finest delights that the country had to offer, and we didn’t have to pay for it with wind burned faces and hypothermia. Takk, Ísland!
Around mile 85 I arrived at Drop Bag 1. The Abyss is a pseudo-self-supported race, meaning the race organizers expect you to be self sufficient, but they allow you to leave yourself two drop bags at two points along the course, which they transport for you. There is no fanfare at the bag drops, there’s just a metal locker full of bags that a van drops there maybe an hour or three before you arrive. I had just caught the 3rd place racer at the bag drop when I pulled off to resupply from my bag. He missed the drop and kept going for a few hundred feet before turning around to circle back. We sucked down gels, snacks, and in my case also baby food in an attempt to put back the withdrawls we had been taking out for the last four or five hours. I was efficient about it, and was soon rolling again, temporarily, on deliciously smooth pavement.
The course until this point had been at times smooth, at times sandy, at times wet, and at times very, very rugged and bumpy. As far as gravel classifications go, I would rate the most aggressive sections as very fat mountain bike trails, not gravel roads. In fact, I did not know it at the time, but the guy who went on to win the race won it on a full suspension mountain bike with aero bars. Take that information as you will when considering what to ride if you do this event yourself. All in all I felt well equipped on my bike, but there is no doubt that I could have let the brakes go on the descents more if I had suspension smoothing out the sharp rocks along the way.
3rd place caught me again quickly, then dropped me. Could I have matched his pace? Maybe, for a while, but I was determined not to gut myself through needless folly. Some of these younger racers were in their early 20s. I could be their dad. Pride goes before the inevitable self destruction. Slow it down, old man.
The course began to climb again. I hadn’t studied it well, but I knew that we sort of climbed at the beginning, then descended to the bag drop, then climbed off and on again for a while and then it all got fuzzy.
The climbing turned out to be quite tough. The second half of the course had a measure of short, steep cruelty that the first half had spared us from. I can’t say that I was entirely prepared for that, but I soldered on. The cool air and abundant oxygen kept my systems running far better than they ever would at altitude back in Denver. I had been given a bit of a free pass on some of the adversity that I otherwise deserved.
I passed another rider taking a nature break. Back in 3rd, I thought. Wow! I wasn’t 100% sure of this, but I could only guess at two sets of tire tracks in the sand in front of me. I was so incredibly chuffed at my progress. The 2nd place rider appeared as a dot at the summit of a climb in front of me. Was he fading? Could I catch him? Could I win? It’s amazing how quickly the delusions of grandeur kick in.
The rider I had passed caught and re-passed me. The endless series of puncy climbs softened me up. I worked hard to keep pace. “I’m not dead yet!”
Actually, I was dying. I had stopped racing my own race. I was running hot. I had stopped fueling in the heat of the moment. Somewhere in those rolling black hills, dark canyons, and cold rivers, I had lost touch with my discipline and strategy. Poof. Pop. Boom. Without ceremony, I bonked.
For a while I could see the two riders here and there, a minute or three ahead of me. Always cresting the next hill, always looking composed. Then they faded and disappeared with finality around the next turn, never to be seen again. I was alone with myself and my bad decisions. I was also alone with a bad gut.
When you bonk this hard you’re sort of hollow. Externally there isn’t much sign of distress, but internally there’s just nothing there. No fuel, no blood, no muscles, no bones. Your skin is an empty suit willing itself along for the next mile, and then the next. These are dark moments for me. My thoughts get negative. I get down on myself. Sometimes I quit the sport, repeatedly, but I also keep riding because the rescue Taxi costs $380 for a pickup and $4 a mile after that. Also, quitting isn’t an option, it’s just a fantasy. But I do take notes in these sorts of moments. “Don’t forget this moment, Stephen, be sure to never do a bike race again after this one, it’s just not worth it.”
But of course it is worth it. Bonks end. Dark thoughts are banished. A threesome family of perfect white swans swimming in a volcanic lake remind you of the beauty of your present situation, your present life, the gift that it is to be alive, to be riding a bike here, in Iceland.
I thought back for a second to nearly exactly 24 hours before, when I had been sitting blissfully in that otherworldly blue hot spring, counting the final fleeting moments of peace before the race prep began. How could this present experience of discomfort and discouragement be so closely related to that other experience of total comfort and bliss? Iife is wild! Iceland is amazing.
I never really came back from the bonk all the way. The final hours of the race did get better. Another rider passed me. We did not make eye contact. He did not return my hello. Maybe his thoughts were also dark? He rode up the volcano in front of me. I walked. I wasn’t in an ego mindset any longer, I was just trying to move forward at a pace that was within myself.
I didn’t particularly enjoy, in the moment, the final 50 miles up and over the ancient mass of the Helka volcano. The course remained beautiful, but the ups were hard earned and the downs were sandy and trecherous. At one moment you were cruising along, the next your front wheel was gone and you were airborne, landing in a pile of fine pumice. The red badge of courage would be a memento from this trip.
The course flattened and reconnected with the beginning of the loop that it was. Terrain became familiar again. I had ridden this in the other direction last night. Next would be the flowers, next would be the river crossing, next would be the sheep, and the trees, and the farms, and the pavement, and that tiny little rise right before town.
Next I was done, and elated, and grateful, and relieved, and hungry, and happy, and wondering how David was doing. He had sent me a few text updates but my phone was off. He was 50 miles back. The clouds and rain had moved in. David still had some Icelandic demons to battle, and he battled them so well. Five hot dogs later, he sailed through the finish line. I gave him a hug, there was emotion on his face. He held it together. I understood.
The Abyss is a gravel race, but it delivers so much more than the gravel race experience. It delivers an immersive experience of iceland that can’t be had on a car, or at a roadside waterfall, or a posh hot springs. The Abyss over-delivers. You come for the race? You’ll get that, but you’ll get so much more. You’ll get views burned into your memory forever. You’ll get challenges that you’ll find few other places. If the weather is nice, you’ll never see more amazing and extended sunsets and sunrises. Glaciers to your left, volcanoes to your right, rivers down the middle, and riders around you to share it with.
Takk for the experience, Iceland. Takk for the course and the reason to come, Bergur!
