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:
The course was flatter today, so we didn’t weigh ourselves. We did three passes of a short time trial course. It was super windy and the course is really curvy and it was kind of rolling too, so you would come around the corner and the wind would hit you like a wall. The times were pretty fast though.
On the first pass, eight minutes was considered a good time, but for the next two, 7:40 was good. This time, rather than dropping the slowest time, they added up the grand total and placed us using that number. I ended up 10th overall and was second among the 15-16 year-old riders.
My grand total time was 22:42, the best time was 22:06. The ride back was pretty easy.
We had an hour and half to relax, so I spent most of that time in the cafeteria talking with some of the other riders.
After our break, they broke us up based on our GC. There are 28 riders so they split us up into four groups of seven. I was placed in the third group. Each of the groups did something different. Obviously, the first group was really strong so they went out and did a race simulation. Everyone on that ride said it was really tough.
My group practiced pacelines and echelons. It was still super windy so it was a good day to practice like it was a team time trial or a breakaway.
We had some downtime after dinner and I played pool, of course.
The presentation tonight was about recovery. They talked about how many and how soon after a ride you should have carbs and calories.
One thing I thought was really interesting is that if you eat something salty while you are drinking your water after a ride, you retain 30-50 percent more water.
Most fun:
Getting the results back was the most fun part of the day. I liked seeing how I placed today. I didn’t really go anywhere in the GC, but I liked seeing where I was in the time trial today.
Most challenging:
The second and third 5K repeats were pretty hard. The wind kept getting stronger throughout the day and I was already tired.
The wind kept shifting too. You never had a headwind for a minute. It was a headwind for 30 seconds, then a sidewind, then a tailwind for a few seconds than a headwind again and then back to a sidewind. It was hard to settle in.
On my mind:
Today was the last really hard day and I am pretty happy with how I did. If you add it all up we are still under an hour of time trialing. I rode hard each day.
Best food:
I had two bowls of oatmeal for breakfast with applesauce. More applesauce than oatmeal actually. The vegetarian options didn’t look as good today, so I had a plate of pork for dinner.
I had a cup of coffee, which I have never had before. It was pretty good. One of the guys told me if I had a cup of coffee I’d go faster. So I did and I went pretty fast, so it couldn’t have been too bad.
Up next:
Tomorrow, instead of riding, we are meeting individually with the coaches to go over our results. I’m not really sure about what we’ll do, but I think we’ll talk about how we did, how we feel about it and what we should do to get better. I am looking forward to seeing what they have to say.