Another new hill

In the spirit of trying new climbs, I did a new ride down south this morning. From home I headed up the Veloway into a pretty stiff southerly, then turned onto along Panalatinga Road and up Cox Hill Road. The main part of  the climb is 3.2km at an average gradient of 4.8%, which makes it a reasonable little climb (for me at least).

Cox Hill Road looking bak to the coast.

From Cox Hill Road it was a lefty onto Piggott Range Road. I really enjoyed this part of the ride - it's a great road for bikes. The surface is really smooth and there's a metre wide, crack free edge to ride in. The views are nice too, with the coast off to the left and the valley across to the right.

From there I turned onto Grants Gulley Road then onto Main Road which descended down towards the Blacks Road intersection and onto Coromandel Valley. The descent was a ripper, again, with some great views down the coast.

View from the Main Road descent on the way to Coromandel Valley.

Coromandel Valley through to Blackwood was just awful. The road is rough, narrow, busy and I didn't feel particularly safe. It's a road I'll avoid in the future. Reaching Blackwood I deliberated  briefly between Shepherds Hill or Belair Road for the descent. I went for the latter and I'm glad I did. I got to the bottom in 4:25 minutes at a touch under 50km/h which, needless to say, was great fun. The ride was 50km with 800m of vertcal ascent, which still took me 2.5 hours.

With only six weeks to go until the TDU ride I need to start some more serious training and ramping up the distances. I'm keen to get some 90-100km rides under my belt over the next few weeks. I'm still intending to do the 126km TDU ride but I'm a bit concerned that it might be too much for me (and my dodgey back). The other concern is that I might be too slow and get caught by the pro tour riders who are evidently due to finish the race in Tanunda at just after 2pm. This gives me 7.5 hours, which should be enough time, allowing for plenty of breaks. However, I'm stll not 100% convinced so my backup plan is to do the 92km ride from Kersbrook. I think I'll just see how my fitness goes and what the weather forecast is and decide which distance to do a week or so out from the ride.