After about 500 miles of basics, challenge yourself with more advanced training. After warming up with a moderate day ride, find a hill you can climb without totally exhausting yourself. After riding up the hill, recover on the way down, and then go up again. As your fitness improves, add more repeats. The power and stamina developed with hill work will assist you in tackling the larger hills on the route near Austin.
Interval training works the same way.
Start with one each ride and then add more and longer sprints each time you ride. Many cyclists use the picnic loop at Memorial Park for interval training. Each lap is one mile and riders sprint for one lap and then slow down for a recovery lap, repeating the process as needed. Interval training and hill work will improve overall speed, endurance and ability to recover from challenging parts while still riding. The Official Isuzu MS150 Bike Shops host free training rides, which we bly suggest all riders take advantage.