Training ride to Malvern from Wolves. In a word; Hilly.

So, yesterday myself and the machine that answers to the name James Green, completed a training ride to the rather posh place that is Malvern. Not the sort of place you'd expect to find a street called "Cockshot Road", but it's there. Nice.

The ride there was fairly quick, bang on 2 hours and 8 minutes, according to my trip computer. There had been a few climbs on the way there, but nothing major. So we stopped for food and decided on the route home. The thing about using Google Maps is it's all just a load of lines on a screen, it doesn't say that there's a man eater of a climb on your chosen route. Well there was and it hated me. Stupid hill.

I've since found out that this hill is called Ankerdine Hill (which kinda rhymes with what I was calling it halfway up) and it was part of the Tour of Britain route in 2007. There's a video on youtube of the climb, viewed from the bars of someone taking part in a time trial up the hill. It's here if you want to see what it's like. It made me realise that I need to really up my training on steep stuff like this, as it really sapped all my strength for the rest of the ride home. Every hill seemed like a mountain after that.

So, more training tomorrow night, nothing as challenging as Ankerdine though.

Nice one to Green for waiting at the top for me, I'm pretty sure he got up there in a fraction of the time I did!

Cheers, Chris.