You just need to fuel and rest more, BigRed - you'll become conditioned to it soon, it just takes a little time. Just the other day I rode 10 miles out to an event, and the ride there felt awful. The ride back felt WAY better, I think that was a case of my body just not being awake enough that particular morning.

My ride in was a little breezy and felt slow, heading further East tonight to visit my daughter hopefully will be better.
Keeping with the spinning and my knees are feeling much better, back is still sore but I think that's a combination of sleeping in some weird contorted positions and not enough of said sleep

Noticed my back brakes are 'sticking' - which actually turns out to be a mix between a sticky 'arm' (or the part of the V-brake that holds the pad) and a very wildly untrue hub. I need to go to the LBS soon and get that looked at, I've a spoke that's come completely out of the hub amongst the hub being as it is. This means I'm using my front brakes exclusively as the pad rubs on the rim pretty badly and I've not had much time to really fiddle about to see if I can adjust it far enough out to make contact only when I pull the brake lever.