I packed my stuff, loaded my bike, took a caffeine pill to stave off the impending no-coffee headache and rolled from the cabin at 4:38 a.m., set on making it to Hatfield some 30 miles distant for breakfast. Waiting for Steve to start breakfast at the store at 7 or timing my passage by the state park lodge for breakfast would waste too much time and put me behind schedule for the day. My calorie deficit immediately started to tell on me as I pedaled up the paved climb to Queen Wilhelmina State park. I had no power, energy, or snap in my legs and my breathing was labored. Regardless of how much I had eaten the night before or how much I had rested, the extreme lethargy of early morning was to be a trend throughout the race [1] . It seemed like my legs always needed a couple of hours of steady pedaling to wake up and function properly.   I took the obligatory selfie at the park sign and continued along the flat pavement of Highway 88 to the point where the course diverg...