The ups and downs

The weather has been up and down this past week. Some warm, some cold, some rain, a little of it all (but no snow).
Tuesday was a good ride w/ a former Bloomington hammer who moved to Chicago for med school. He has been riding the flats of IL for several months, so we took a good hilly route for him. Good hard ride. Started out cold, but ended about perfect.
Most of the week was similar; cold early (8-9am), then perfect by the time I'm finishing riding (10-11:30am), then really nice for the actual day.
Thursday it rained hard for the most of the day, but I was able to get out for a good ride and beat the rain. That system was pushing in a cold front though and Friday morning it was in the (high) 20's. All this nice spring weather has softened me up and I just couldn't make myself get out in the sub-freezing temps (I needed to do an easy hour or so and riding easy in that kind of cold is extra bad news).
Today (Sunday) rain was forecasted all day. And the weather-man was right; it rained all day. As long as it wasn't a total downpour, I just planned to go for it and ride in the rain. I made a plan to do a good hard 2.5hr ride (Catholic Cemetery for those on the know), made a couple phone calls (to no avail) and headed out alone in the rain. The ride was really good and my morale was high (because I had planned on riding in the rain, as opposed to getting caught out **key**). But then I flatted on the Catholic Cemetery climb. My hands were soaked, as was my tire and rim and well, everything, so it took me 10minutes to get it all changed and rolling because I couldn't get a good grip on the tire to get it back on. Que cera, I rode strong otherwise.
So obviously I didn't race today. This weekend's race was 3+hrs away and the forecast was for wet. I'm not planning on racing next weekend either, but after that it's on. I have races on my calendar every weekend through July starting April 10. Road, MTB and TT. Which reminds me: I need to burn some KJ's on the TT bike. Starting soon. That thing's going to feel totally foreign to me.