After Retiring from Professional Cycling, Brad Huff Finds a New Sense of Joy in Gravel Rides
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Name: Brad Huff
Age: 43
Hometown: Springfield, Missouri
Occupation: Cycling Industry Marketing
Time Cycling: I rode BMX bikes for a few years as a kid, and I started riding mountain bikes in 1996—haven’t stopped since.
Reason for Cycling: Cycling allows me to connect to the world around me with greater understanding and appreciation. It brings me immense joy.
I started racing at the Spokes BMX park in Springfield, Missouri, when I was 9 years old and stuck with it for three years. Then, in my junior year of high school I picked up a mountain bike and haven’t stopped pedaling since then. There were not any training apps back then, only the Joe Friel training bible. I used that book for years to guide my training.
I originally picked up a mountain bike in 1996 to gain more endurance for running track in high school. The following year, I was the 1997 Junior Beginner Mountain Bike State Champion for Missouri. I gravitated towards cycling because it let me push myself unlike anything else I had done up to that point. I remember playing a football game on Friday night and telling my coach I had a mountain bike race on Sunday. He would shake his head and say, “well, just show up for practice on Monday.”
In the fall of 1998, I purchased a road bike and by the next summer I made it onto the U.S. National Team. My first international race, the Tour de Hokkaido in Japan, didn’t go well at all. I was dropped on day one and never made it to the second stage. From that point forward, I was determined to better myself and get back to the National Team once again.
Cycling became my identity very early in my journey. My high school yearbook shows me racing mountain bikes at our local trails. I remember getting sideways glances when I rode my bike to church and showed up in my riding gear—in rural Missouri. And I even sat through a few classes in school while wearing spandex. In both cases, the way I was dressed didn’t match those around me, but it didn’t matter to me because it felt right being my true self, no matter where I was.
Early in my cycling journey, I overtrained and was fighting an eating disorder. Thanks to getting dropped on the first climb at the Tour de Hokkaido, I thought I needed to lose weight to be competitive. Predictably, I got injured. But by then I was in the early stages of getting a degree in dietetics from Missouri State University, and through the course of that degree program, I learned to see the importance of health, and how what I felt was optimal cycling weight wasn’t healthy. I returned to the elite level looking like the guy who ate Brad Huff. Then it all began to happen so quickly for me.
I tell people I was in the right place at the right time, but really I had worked methodically for 10 years, won two Elite National Championships on the track, one Elite Criterium National Championship, and one bronze medal at the 2005 Pan Am Championships in the Pursuit. It didn’t “just happen;” I wasn’t stopping until I reached my goal of becoming a professional cyclist.
I can remember back to my college days and riding the rollers while studying for my next test on multiple occasions, and riding in an immobilization boot with a platform pedal on one side for a few months as an injury healed. I had a tenacity that would not be stopped by anything, no matter how long it took.
For 13 years, I rode professionally. Then at 39, I retired—and admittedly, I struggle to find my purpose now, the thing that drives me each day to be the best. I don’t know what I am working toward, and that’s hard for someone who has spent most of their adult life driving towards a big goal every single day.
I lived what I call the Peter Pan lifestyle—I was living life on my own terms, making my own schedule, and doing it all for the sake of being a faster cyclist. My life was planned around perfect training, nutrition, and recovery with little regard for anything else. I was the boss.
Leaving the Peter Pan lifestyle has been a struggle. Starting a new chapter hasn’t been easy after devoting more than two decades to my passion. I’m having trouble finding the next thing that motivates me in a similar way.
One thing, though, that has helped me reconnect with cycling is riding gravel. I like to say that I was riding gravel before it was cool. My training partner, Eric Haynes and I put thorn-proof tubes in our tires (mine were always Kenda!) and would head out on epic rides into the farm lands around Springfield, Missouri. You could call it secret training—heavier tires meant I was pushing more watts to keep up with friends and also had more ability to rip down the gravel farm roads.
After retiring, I was fortunate enough to get a real gravel bike, after meeting Sage Titanium Bikes founder David Rosen. The versatility of the Sage Storm King gravel bike opened up new adventures because I could piece together gravel roads and mountain bike trails in and around Colorado, Utah, Missouri, and everywhere else I could take my bike.
A good friend reminded me that it was the act of moving through space under our own power that was the true blessing in cycling—taking in and digesting information as you push down a given road. For me, gravel cycling mixes the best of road and mountain biking. It gives me serenity out in the rural country and endless options linking trails, gravel roads, and pavement together, all while feeling free from my worries… and traffic.
There is no racing for me anymore. I just want to ride and have fun, and keep my body healthy and capable on this new journey I am on. After smashing into a car that pulled in front of me in 2020, and then meniscus surgery as a result in 2022, I just want to keep riding for as long as I can and be as safe as reasonably possible. Each ride has its inherent risks, but I always feel a bit more at ease away from traffic on gravel roads.
As much as I enjoy gravel, I don’t always feel like riding. I have a complicated relationship with bikes since, for most of the last two decades, they were the tools of my trade and the thing around which my life revolved. A bike ride used to give me instant feedback on my productivity (was it a good day of training?) and filled me with joy that lasted long after I unclipped from the pedals. And while it was my job to ride, it also gave me a few hours to escape the world and escape my troubles.
Now that the goal-oriented purpose of riding is gone, I’m learning how the bike is such a powerful tool to de-stress and disconnect for a while.
Sometimes, even a walk or a weight workout can help improve my mood. But neither fill me with the immense joy that cycling does—the feeling of freedom from the world, freedom from my troubles that comes with each passing fence post out on my favorite farm roads.
I wouldn’t be the human I am without the bike. I continually ate humble pie year after year, spurred on by a few bright lights of performance each season. Those fleeting moments kept me hungry and coming back for more. I used to joke that I was the only one dumb enough not to quit. Even if I wasn’t winning, I was always pushing for that one chance, that one special day when it could all come together the way I dreamed.
Now, after ending my professional career I am attempting to take that same winning attitude and relentlessness into my new day-to-day reality. It hasn’t been as easy, but getting on two wheels, sharing a few hours by myself or with my closest friends brings me some of my greatest joys.
It’s also the community. The cycling community has changed my life for the better. It’s the friendships that cycling has brought into my life. Yeah, the results kept me in the game but it was the love I felt in my heart for those that I shared my journey with that kept me coming back year after year.
To other cyclists: never stop having fun. Don’t take your performances or training too seriously. As my late friend Steve Tarpinian stated, “the beauty is in the balance.”
Find something outside of cycling that also lifts you up. I know I kept my horse blinders on for far, far too long. Looking around is important and can make the riding that much more powerful.
These three tips have made my cycling journey a success:
1. Get a bike fit
It is the number one way to ensure you will achieve your goals. Your body will work more efficiently and will thank you for the investment you made.
2. Eat well
Do not ever think you have to be skinny to perform. Take care of your body and the performances will speak for itself.
3. Give yourself grace
Having a sliding scale for each day’s training will help keep you consistent and aware of what is possible on a given day. If you are working with a coach, speak up and ask questions. Know why you are doing what you are doing. It will help you understand the process and the end result. Not everyday will be magical, so trust the process and don’t quit pedaling.
Brad’s Must-Have Gear
→ Velocio Utility Bib Short: Comfort and storage at its best! You get quick access to snacks or your phone for capturing that joy in a frame, and the fit to keep you comfortable for hours.
→ Skratch Labs Sport Hydration Drink Mix: It works, it’s clean, and every ride is more enjoyable as it keeps me going.
→ Sage Storm King Gravel Bike: Just look at my social media posts and you will see the places it has taken me! Get one!
→ Oru Case Top Tube Bag: Use it once and you’ll know. Brilliantly designed for quick easy access, thanks to the magnetic opening. No more risking crashing to stash something or grab something quickly.
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