Day 2 - Reykjavik to ? 105km

Before the darkness

This is a tale of three rides, so I'll break it up for you.

1 - Leaving Reykjavik: This was more complicated than it needed to be, and a good indication of why I'm a terrible planner. I tried leaving the city on N1 (ring road), but the drivers were having none of it. It was similar to a 400 series highway and didn't seem safe at all. However, none of my research indicated there'd be any problem taking my bike on it. With my tail between my legs I backtracked to the city to try and find side roads back out, which wasn't easy. I've found that most side roads in Reykjavik are dead ends. I needlessly added an extra 10km to my ride, but I did get out of the city.

2 - The first part of the ride around the bay: On the way to Arkanes, there's a tunnel across a bay that would probably take less than 1/2 hour to cross, or there's a 60km ride around the bay. I'd like to say I opted for the 60km ride because I'm an animal, but the truth is that you can't ride your bike in the tunnel. I could've taken my bike on a bus to go across, but that felt like cheating.

The first 30km were amazing. Beautiful weather, stunning scenery and empty roads. I found several glacial streams to refill water bottles and stay hydrated. Lots of goats on the mountains to keep me company, it was perfect. Right when I hit the halfway point aground the crest of the bay, everything went downhill in a hurry. 

Making friends with the locals

3 - The second part of the ride around the bay: The weather got cool, wet and dreary. The scenery was doing nothing for me. Worst of all, I was losing speed and energy and I couldn't figure out why. I was taking plenty of breaks, staying fueled and hydrated, but for some reason I couldn't maintain a decent speed or attack any of the climbs. Frustrated, I decided to nap on the side of the road to recover.

Yes, I took this picture after I woke up, but this is how and where I napped so shut up.

It worked, sort of. I made it around, but just barely. I had no energy, and was running low on water since there were no streams on this side, for some reason. Not to worry, only about 20km left to Arkanes campsite.

So, apparently you can't ride your bike to Arkanes?!

It's already 9pm, and I didn't have a plan b for this situation, so I decided to just continue north on N1 until I came across somewhere decent to camp. After another 15km, I just couldn't keep my legs moving. I eventual settled on a not-so-decent patch on the side of the highway. 

It doesn't look like it, but this is 11pm

I was so beat. When I turned off my gps to take a nap earlier in the day, it congratulated me on setting a personal elevation record for the day's ride - 814 metres. With the beautiful scenery and ideal conditions at the time, I guess I didn't register all the climbing I was doing, but it certainly caught up with me. And at that point I still had another 30km riding left in the day. 

Even with traffic whizzing by all night, I slept like a baby.

* note - my garmin congratulated me on setting a personal record of 814 metres elevation, but I didn't have this garmin on my cross Canada ride eight years ago where I had two separate days with +1200 and +1400 meters. I can't imagine doing that today. Hopefully my stamina improves.