Update: "Am I cooked"?

A few days ago, I asked this sub for some quick advice right before going on my first bikepacking trip - I had a bit of an experimental setup to work with. There were a lot of great comments (thank you!) and some people wanted to know how it went, so here's my update! I'll try to hit all the topics from the comments on my previous post. Pics from the trip and the pic of my setup going into it are included.

1. Overall, I'll say it went alright. I do not regret the trip whatsoever, and I had a good time for most of it, but I definitely left with some lessons learned. Biked a cool loop route from Washington DC up through Virginia and back down home through Maryland

2. I ended up doing a 100ish-mile loop starting from home where I could've gotten an emergency ride home at any point if anything bad happened. Thankfully, that didn't happen. Day 1 was great, but exhausting. My legs did end up hitting the rear bag at the end of each pedal (as many people mentioned), but honestly that didn't bother me at all. Got to camp with no issues (although this was the first time riding with any significant weight in haul, and man, was it tiring).

3. The next morning, though, when I tried to pack everything back up, all my magical rigging fell apart. I couldn't get anything attached safely, and had to pivot to get the rest of the way home. This included taking the brain off my backpack and using it as a front bag as well as a means of holding my tent bag up in the front without it falling out from the handle bars and killing me (thank you for the idea, u/Eric053! You might've literally saved me here). I then had to wear the rest of the backpack, which, in combination with the very long Day 1 (long for me, at least), had my butt bones SCREAMING. Honestly, I don't know how you long-distance cyclists train your bottoms to withstand consecutive long days.

So again, with this long-winded report coming to a close, the trip went just okay. The pain I was feeling on Day 2 definitely wasn't fun, but if I can figure out a more reliable bag setup (probably get dedicated mounting straps for the pack and a frame bag) and get my body to play nicer with consecutive long days, I think I'd like to go on more trips like this. The main appeal of bikepacking to me, with a backpacking history, is getting to explore more miles of a place per day than I would on foot. I just need to figure out some of these growing pains. Thanks so much again to everyone for your advice!