Hill training and achillies pain

I was reading through the Sustrans C2C guide last night and got a bit scared at the route profile. There are some huge climbs on route. Many off road. I live in one of the flattest parts of the UK and feel that I'm going to be totally unprepared for what lies ahead.

With this in mind I did a training session this morning that took in three big climbs. This is all relative as the longest climb was 143ft. C2C has climbs of around 1500ft over little more than a couple of miles but you've got to start somewhere and work with what you've got.

At the end of the ride my legs were shot and I was an ugly sweaty mess. My achillies is still aching too. I don't know what's wrong. The symptoms don't make sense. I need to go back to the doctors.

I'm riding the new bike in and out of Cambridge too this week which is going well and giving me another 30 minutes or so of training time a day.

I'm also mixing in a light free weight workout or two a week including cycle crunches which really hurt !!!

Trying not to push too hard as these are early days but I'm enjoying the training at the moment and starting to feel fitter already. Hopefully the last few pounds I'm trying to lose will drop off over the next few weeks too :)