By "first crank" I mean your initial crank on that given day.

e.g. I get home from wherever I may be at night (7pm and the crank is fine) and I don't use it again until the morning following (9am and the crank is rough and rigid and feels like it's struggling to go into second gear because the RPM's are too high to have not changed gears automatically) -- that's what I mean by first crank.

I've found that using the slapshift in the mornings can help this problem, I also let it sit in the mornings for about 2 minutes before I leave.