As I look back at our ride across America, it's easy to pinpoint the most difficult part of the ride: maintaining the mental discipline to wake up early and keep peddling mile after mile, day after day. For the first two weeks each morning my body would hurt more and more. As we rode on, the idea that my body would toughen to the riding seemed to become more and more elusive.

On the second day of the ride, we woke up to a cool, rainy morning in eastern Georgia. The weather was miserable. We had roughly 92 miles to bike. As Jimmy and I slowly peddled our bikes, I felt as if each joint in my body was creaking, telling me not to go on. Yet we continued. It rained, we were wet, but we made it to our camp.

As the days progressed, I found that a numbing soreness in my palms would not go away. This is to be expected, our hands aren't used to supporting such weight on a small surface area. This pain in my hands was ever throbbing, making each mile seem like ten.

Life sucked! There were times when Jimmy and I were quite miserable. Rain, stifling heat, pain, rashes, you name it we had it! And the truth is that you will have similar experiences during your ride. Jimmy and I rode an average of 92 miles each day. We carried all our gear for 1/2 the trip, this obviously contributed to the little voice in our head telling us to stop, but don't think you won't hear that voice in your head.

But, here is the good news. You can handle it. The human body is amazingly adept as surviving and adapting. Based on your age, experience and fitness you need to be smart, but you can accomplish more than you likely realize.

This is why I belive the mind is the weakest link. Your mind will think that you are ready to quit before your body is. If you can learn to discipline your mind to push through the pain you will be successful. If you can focus on anything besides the present suffering, you will find the miles starting to pass more quickly.

Jimmy and I both served in the Marines and knew about mental discipline and pain. I trusted that we both would be able to manage that pain and we did. Here are some tips that I've found to be helpful:

• Listening to music is a great distraction
   
• False motivation is almost as good as real motivation. Marines are masters of using yelling, and other gimmicks to provide false motivation. The amazing thing is that false motivation actually seems to provide similar benefits to the real thing. Think of something that motivates you. Yell out a few "ooh-rahs!" Keep doing it till you starting feeling pumped up.
   
• Do whatever you can to keep from looking at your cycling computer. When you get in the habit of checking your mileage every minute, it will seem like you are not making any progress.
   
• If riding with someone else, start a conversation with them.
   
• Start looking at the scenery. Watch the clouds, what type of trees do you see, why color is the pavement you are riding on. But don't get so enamored with the landscape you stop paying attention to the road.
   
• Sometimes I've found it helpful to not look around and just concentrate on the ground right in front of me. I think this helps me to get into a focused peddling rythm. It helps to block out the pain.

Hopefully some of these tricks will help you. I'm sure you will also discover others that work better for you. And if all else fails, don't be ashamed to yell out five 'ooh-rahs." You might be surprised with the results.