As if that wasn't enough, my right wrist was still trying to heel after a really bad sprain from a Texas Series race. In fact, my wrist was giving me such a fit that I was almost positive it was broken even though the x-rays said otherwise. But in the end, I wasn’t going to let little things like pneumonia, gas prices and a sprained wrist keep me from riding.

 The first race in the series was in a little place called Ducktown, Tenn. and the race was called the Cohutta 100. Ducktown is in the middle of the Cherokee National forest — a couple of hours east of Chattanooga. Ducktown straddles the Ocoee River and its aquatic center was the site of the 1996 Olympic Games whitewater competitions.

In fact, much of the 100-mile mountain bike race follows the fast-flowing river. Altogether, the race took us just slightly into North Carolina, across the mountains of Northern Georgia and then back into the southeast corner of Tennessee.

I was only able to afford the drive to Tennessee because I received $200 in support from the Omicron Women’s Study Club in Tulia, and that money helped me rent a compact car that got a whopping 30 miles per gallon compared to my pickup.

Along the way I stopped at a couple of YMCAs in Jackson, Miss., and Chattanooga. I had to keep my legs spinning.

It’s always funny when I go in somewhere to ride a stationary bike because I’ll literally be on one for about three to four hours and I’ll see a hundred people come and go, but I’ll still be there. People get irritated with me because they’ll be waiting for me to get off one of the bikes, but they’ll eventually give up and go do something else.

Also, most people don’t realize that it’s a logistical challenge in figuring out how to get to a race because you have to plan your route according to wherever you’re able to stop and keep your aerobic engine running. So, the week before a race I always spend several hours on the web plotting travel time, mileage, the best rates on rental cars or Amtrak and airline fares and looking up gyms where I know they’ll let me stop in and workout.

I’m a member of the Big Spring YMCA and I’ve discovered that you can usually stop in and train for free at any YMCA in the country. The only trouble I have sometimes is finding them in the middle of big cities.

 When I made it to Tennessee, the weather was absolutely perfect. It was lower 70s with light, cool winds out of the southwest. I had a day to rest before the race and I was praying for the beautiful weather to hold out, but the Tennessee weather man on my fuzzy motel television  was predicting a 100-percent chance of rain for race day.

Perfect.

I was still coughing and my lungs still hadn’t gotten rid of the junk lingering around in them, but I hadn’t come all the way from West Texas to wimp out because of some nasty weather and a little bit of pneumonia still harassing me.

So, I went out and bought a couple cans of Scotch Guard and hosed all of my cycling gear with as much of it as I could to help repel whatever water was headed our way. I’m surprised that my motel room didn’t blow up from all of the Scotch Guard fumes that I’d sprayed inside of it.

But, spending the night in a sleazy motel room didn’t help my lungs very much either. The guy who owned the motel said that he gave was a non-smoking room. Yeah right. If it was, then some moron next door was smoking like a chimney and it was coming through the walls.

Of course, any motel room that costs below thirty-five dollars is going to be a rat-trap, but hey, most of the time I simply gotta’ do what I gotta’ do just to get to the starting line.

And sure enough, the Tennessee weather man was right on the money because when I got up on the morning of the race, it was raining in sheets.

I’ve heard of it “raining sideways,” but I’d never actually seen it do so until that morning. So, at 2:30 AM, I loaded up my bike in my compact car and headed up to the mountain in a Tennessee monsoon.

Some really big-name riders were there at the starting line, such as Floyd Landis — winner of the 2006 Tour de France — but I wasn’t worried about them. All I was concerned about was staying warm.

When the race started, the Scotch Guard held out for about five minutes, and then I was drenched. It was as if someone had tossed me into a swimming pool and then sat me back down on top of my bike.

Then, when all 250 of us riders hit the single-track forest trails, it was mud city. During the first ten miles, I was getting so much mud kicked up on me that I had to keep wiping off my specs so that I could see where I was going. In the middle of the mud bath, I came up with a nifty idea for some type of mechanical windshield wiper that could be attached to a pair of glasses. It definitely would’ve sold that day.

In that part of Tennessee, the soil is a type of thick red clay, and not only did it turn as slick as snot while 250 of us sloshed through it, but the stuff sticks like glue and then it accumulates in layers on whatever it gets slung on.

So by mile twenty, I’d collected so much mud on my body that it started to seep into the rear padding of my cycling shorts, and it was like I was riding on a layer of sandpaper. I couldn’t bear to stay seated on the saddle of my bike, which is extremely necessary to do so that you can maintain balance and power while you’re romping through a trail.

I did the Cohutta 100 last year, and so I knew that as long as I made it to mile 56, then it would get a lot better. Basically, the race is a 12,000 foot climb up to the top of the Northern Georgia mountain range, then you get a nice downhill reprieve after the fifty-sixth mile with only a couple of more monsters — brief climbs at mile 80 and mile 90.

You can’t look at a race as one long trek. You have to look at it as many small objectives along the way. You have to program your mind to look at it that way because that’s the only chance you have of making it.

So, my tail end was completely raw by mile 56, and not only that, but at the top of the mountain I was basically a popsicle on top of bike and hacking up stuff, as if I had whooping cough, because of that bout of pneumonia that I showed up with. But, I knew that I was at least halfway through it and so there was only one way to make it to the finish — just keep going.

 A long, tedious, climbing race effects you physically, psychologically, emotionally, and believe it or not, even spiritually. Not to mention, it’s a race. You have to make it to certain checkpoints along the way by a certain time, or else they pull you from the course.

And, I don’t want to waste all the money and time that I’ve invested in training and traveling by not finishing, which is a huge incentive that keeps me going.

This year, as compared to last, I stayed positive throughout most of the race and I was emotionally good to go until I hit the last major climb at mile 90. Then I slowed way down.

I was on track to finish about an hour faster than I had last year, but my lungs and the cold finally demoralized me and I found myself walking and trudging my bike up the last climb, which lasted for a steep three miles.

The last five miles of the course is a technical downhill with a lot of big rocks that you have to navigate through, but I was so ready to get to the finish that I just plowed through those last five rock-strewn miles pretty fast.

What’s funny is that I finished up in almost exactly the same time this year that I finished in last year — 11 hours and 58 minutes — and I ended up in 125th place out of 250 riders. But, I swear, my bike and me rolled into the finish line weighing about ten pounds heavier than as we left out because of all the mud we hoarded along the way.

I found out that it was a slower race for everyone because of the rain and mud, and so I guess I can’t complain about my time. Not even Floyd Landis was very fast that day. Not to mention, I’m always pleased just to show up and finish, especially considering that I was riding on sandpaper most of the way, with a bum wrist and with a spell of pneumonia still harassing me.

So was all of that suffering worth it? Always.

Unfortunately, because the price of fuel and traveling has recently skyrocketed, I’m having to abandon doing the National Ultra-Endurance Series altogether because I haven‘t received any sponsorship from anyone and there’s no way that I can afford to hang with the high rollers of the sport.

Instead, I’m just going to focus on doing the Tour Divide Race, which begins June 13 in Banff, Canada, just outside of Calgary, and it ends in Antelope Wells, N.M. — a total of 2,711 miles of self-supported mountain bike racing.

I was going to do the Great Divide Race, which starts in Montana, but it is now being phased out for the Tour Divide Race. The difference is that the TDR begins 211 miles north in Banff.

So far, there’s only 14 brave souls who are going to be at the starting line for it. The awesome thing about the TDR is that a company called SPOT is sponsoring the race and they’re going to give each of the riders their new GPS trackers, which will allow anyone to log onto Google Earth and they can see where each rider is at along the Tour Divide trail in real-time.

Pretty cool, eh?