Editor’s note: 14 -year-old Max Cronyn was invited to the USA cycling southwest regional development camp in Flagstaff and will be filing daily updates about what he is doing at the camp. I’ve asked him to answer several questions each day, but if you want to know something, I’ll forward your question to him.

Today’s activities:

We rode up Mars Hill, which goes to Lowell Observatory, three times. They lined us up by age I think and started us one minute apart for a time trial to the top. They took our best two times.

Before the climb, they weighed us with and without our bikes to calculate our watts per kilo I think.

I didn’t do terribly well overall. There were about 30 of us and I finished around 20th. My best times were 02:54 and 02:56. The best time of the day was 02:22.

After the climb I had lunch and took a short nap before we went to the parking lot for skills training. We practiced cornering, stopping, picking up water bottles and grabbing water bottles like it was a feed zone in a race.

After dinner and playing pool we had a presentation about nutrition. They told us not to eat fast food. Their main point was to put good fuel in the tank.

Most fun:

The skills training was pretty fun. At one point we were riding in a circle for a cornering drill with 10 people riding wheel to wheel in the circle.

We also played a game passing water bottles off to each other. There were two lines of riders who were riding in opposite directions and you would pass the bottle off the person who was right behind the rider you got the bottle from. The idea was that the bottle should always be in the same place.

Most Challenging:

Going up Mars Hill was pretty hard, especially the third time. It was hard to pace yourself because it started out really steep, but it was short, so it was hard to gauge how hard you should go. It started off pretty steep, then you hit this super steep section. Once you got around the corner it flattened out a bit so you got down in your drops and tried to hold on to the finish.

On my mind:

I would have liked to have done a little better overall today. I am looking forward to tomorrow because the course is a little better suited to me.

When we weighed the bikes and ourselves together, I totaled 195 pounds and most of the other guys were between 130 and 170 so I’ve got an extra 40 pounds to pull up hills.

Tomorrow there is just one interval, but it is between 18-22 minutes and 4-5 percent grade, which suits me better. Climbing is a good way to measure what kind of watts you can do, but it favors certain body types.

Some of the guys who beat me on the climbs, I can beat on flat time trials.

Best food:

Up here the cafeteria food is a little bit lower quality than I normally eat at home. I ate two helpings of this chimichanga thing and I am hoping it doesn’t turn out badly.

Up next:

After the morning ride, we are going to do drills in the grass. I imagine we’ll bump each other, head butt and rub wheels.