The miles were just going by really slowly. Both Alex and I were dragging. I don't think it was because we were physically tired, just mentally drained. For days we had been avoiding the mountains, dreading the impending pain, and struggling on the relatively flat roads because we were riding straight into the wind. We were sure the riding would have been easier, but it wasn't. Winds can be worse than hills. Add in the fact that we haven't seen the sun for days and you have the recipe for two unispired riders.

Now, as we began to ride through the mountains, the sky remained gray and the winds shifted from the north to the east. Nothing would be different from the last few days except the climbs would be steeper. And they were steeper and it was tough.

Your mental attitude is a huge factor in how good your riding will be for the day. After about 3 weeks of riding, your muscles stop getting sore, your butt gets used to sitting in the saddle all day, and essentially, you feel like you could ride forever. The limitations that your weak muscles put on your mileage at the beginning of the trip are removed and replaced with new limitations, governed by your energy levels. Your energy is essentially all about your attitude and your nutrition, or the fuel in your tank. If you have a bad or unispired attitude during your ride, you won't have much energy to power over the hills, same thing if you don't eat enough food. On an average day, I burn between 6,000 and 7,000 calories. I need to make sure I have enough gas in the tank at all times, so eating is something I have to take very seriously.

If you've ever read stories about Lance Armstrong, you've probably heard how fanatical he is about his diet. He weighs all of his food, rinses his cottage cheese with water to remove any excess fat, and counts the nutritional values of every morsel of food that enters his mouth. I'm not nearly that fanatical or scientific, plus, I'm not trying to win the Tour De France. I just want to get my bike from one ocean to the other. Perhaps if those pretty French girls with the long legs and the super tight skirts were to kiss me at the end of every day, like they do the stage winners of the tour, then I might weigh my food, but until that happens, I just eat what my body tells me to.

If I had enough money, I would have eaten PowerBars the entire ride, but unfortunately, they're too expensive to be my main food staple while I'm riding. Instead, I broke all the foods down to five food groups based on nothing more than the five different things my body craves; fat, protein, carbohydrates, sugar, and salt. The fats and proteins are the fuel for the long slow riding, and the carbohydrates are needed for when the intensity picks up, for example if the terrain is rolling and there is a decent amount of climbing. I use sugar and salt to kind of regulate things while I'm riding. If it is really hot, or if I'm pushing the pace higher than usual and begin to sweat a lot, then I need to increase my salt to replace what I sweat out. If I'm just grinding out the day in a steady comfortable manner, then I need sugars to keep the fire going. The other nutrional staple is Gatorade. No matter what kind of riding I'm doing, I would usually drink about 2 quarts of Gatorade a day. As I said, I'm not real scientific about my nutrition, but after thousands of miles on the bike, you become in tune with what your body needs to function.