Editor’s note: 14 -year-old Max Cronyn is competing at the USA Cycling Junior Nationals in Bend, Ore. this weekend. He’ll be racing in a time trial, criterium and road race. 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 race:

The time trial was pretty hard. I ended up in 38th place out of 70 or so riders. I think I went out too hard in the first five minutes because I was so excited. It slowed me down for a little bit.

Time trialing is always hard and this course was pretty tough.  It was uphill, but it was kind of a rolling uphill. You’d go up and then round a corner and you’d have to shift down a couple gears because you were going down, then you would go up again and have to get into your small chain ring. It was a really variable course.

Up next:

The next race is a 30-kilometer crit, which has us doing 30 1-kilometer loops. I am not sure how I’ll do, but I am going to race it really hard. I plan on attacking, pulling and working really hard in the race instead of sitting the pack and seeing what happens. It is definitely going to be a fast crit.

You have to work pretty hard in the race because anybody that is out of contention will  get pulled out of the race. The field will actually go from 75 at the start to maybe 25 who will finish. I really don’t have anything to lose going to the front and riding hard.

On my mind:

I feel pretty good right now, my legs feel better after riding. I was really nervous before the time trial. I feel better now having ridden it, but I would have liked to do better.

I was looking at the other kids’ times and there were names that were further ahead of me in the top 15 or 20 that I usually beat in time trials. Either they went really fast or I didn’t go as fast, but I rode hard.

Pre-race meal:

My mom tried to get me to eat this egg and cheese burrito, but I didn’t like the taste of it too much, so I negotiated to only eat half of it. Then I had a bowl of Rice Crispies and a bunch of milk, that was really good.