1. We had a head wind most of the day. It was in the 10-15 mph range, so not a huge factor but it certainly didn't help.
2. The terrain was hillier than what we had experienced for the past couple of days: not killer hills like those along the Mississippi, but wee had to make frequent trips to see Granny and did a lot of standing on climbs.
3. We ran into some horrible pavement on some of the county roads we were on. Most of the roads were just fine, but a few had pavement that was ridiculously soft. I don't know what they paved those roads with, perhaps an old pan of Betty Crocker brownies. One could clearly see where car tires had sunk into the surface by almost an inch. Riding the tandem on this junk was like riding in sand with two flat tires. And there were steep hills to boot. We got off onto better roads after a couple of miles, but the experience sapped our energy.
4. Due to an operator malfunction, we rode with the drum brake on for at least 5 miles right after we got off the awful roads. It's a goof comparable to driving with the parking brake on, only on a bike it makes you work harder rather than your car's engine.
So in retrospect, there shouldn't be any mystery about why we are so pooped!
A word about our route. After leaving Colorado Springs, we generally cycled eastward through the center of Kansas and Missouri. West of St. Louis we turned north along the Mississippi. We were following one of the established (Adventure Cycling Assn.) north-south routes along the river and had intended to follow it to Muscatine, Iowa where we would connect to another ACA east-west route. Only days away from crossing the river into Iowa, we realized that we could shorten the route and save a day and one-half on our schedule by cutting out Iowa and crossing central Illinois to join the ACA east-west route there rather than at Muscatine. So that's what we have been doing for the last two days, which required us to do some quick studying of special color-coded county road maps for cyclists available on the Illinois DOT website, printed and sent to is overnight by my brother Greg (thanks again bro!) The maps allowed us to figure out a low traffic route over the 127 mile stretch from the ACA north-south river route to join the ACA east-west here in Kewanee. And it worked great, other than they need to include a new map color - brown, for the brownie-surfaced roads.
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