Brad Huff Cycling

I now have a new teammate that goes by the name of Armstrong…Andrew Armstrong that is. He is a lone star man that is getting a quick baptism in the Burnaby 6. I have to quickly tell him about our game plan here, don’t crash, swing up once dropped (as this will happen often), don’t crash, and have good exchanges when the shit is hitting the fan. This all went great except for a few exchanges. I now just have this universal pain in my whole saddle region, it is not that noticeable during the races, but once we hit the apron for a few cool down laps it is like the blood rushes in and pain is shortly followed. My body is taking quite a all around beating. Knees are a little tender, but I am chalking that up to never having down a 6 day. Awesome times up in Canada eh!

Friedman Custom seat
Colby breaking the sound barrier in warm up
www.therealmckenzie.com The Gold Mckenzie .com
“Brian your elbow looks horrible!” I quoted as we neared the end of our 200 lap madison

Last night I sub-came to the fact that the 88 inch gear was destroying our chances of staying in the race….for more than 5 laps and more so that my taint was well abused and it was only the 3rd night. up to the 90 inch I went and let me tell you…it did help. My partner and I are still a few gear inches below the front running teams, although that is fine with us. Brian has a great turn of speed for not having several years racing in the top level, so we attempted to utilize this again tonight. Our new strategy was to attempt to get ourselves set up to do a few of the sprint laps. Well if you time getting lapped just right you can jump right in to the sprint a few laps to spare. This is what we did and we did it better than any team out there.
The only thing that I really cared about was beating Friedman on one of the sprints, he had the perfect exchange to set himself up very well for the sprint, while I chased up to Friedman and Pearces exchange, then the sprint was on, but right at the line I nipped Friedman(in an 90inch while he is in the 93.6inch) and yell “Screw you Mike Friedman” I scared the crap out of him, then nearly chopped him in to oncoming traffic, perfect, just perfect.
other news Brian Crosby is going down to Patagonia for nearly 3 month of NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership Schools)…I am super jealous!

So the big boys are still rolling it here @ the Burnaby 6 day. Several of the other teams have chosen to bump there gear up just a tad to a 50×15 or 51×15 to hopefully be more in contention when big gears get rolling. Tonight Brian Crosby and I had a different plan, once we were dropped…or once the 3 or 4 teams that are rolling started to ramp it up and the rest of the field totally blows apart we will not chase our asses off to only be lapped in a little longer than shortly, we would swing up track and drop in with the next group coming up from behind. This worked quite well as Brian and I were actually able to race just a little bit, instead of doing a long Madison TT effort. And actually we were able to mix it up just a tad in a few sprints….maybe 1 or 2, which is about a 100% improvement from the first night. One thing about the 88 inch gear, you spin your ass off, and for me this is a literal scenario as my taint is really starting to get damaged. Also it got a little violent at the track tonight and Friedman is now the club hand mauler….luckily Pearce caught this picture….
I think that Friedman has hit the deck about 4 times now. I was right behind one big crash that sent Kenny Williams and Friedman to the deck and every one else for the rail or apron to avoid the carnage. Kenny was doing one of the best reverse dirt track skidds I have seen in a while, but his tyre rolled right off right when we was about to save it. Pretty impressive at about 50 kph! What else what else….Oh ya, Kelly Murden destroyed the Men’s Missing out! Ya Kelly

So I am up at the Burnaby 6 day race in Vancouver Canada with my Partner Brian Crosby from Minneapolis, MN.
Normal Track Madison racing one would ride anywhere from a 90 inch to a 95 inch gear with a 93 being the most common…but there are several options of combos to choose from. Well at these here smaller track (200 meters in length) 6 day races one needs to gear down a bit to not totally kill their legs day after day of fixed gear riding. BUT it is not mandatory in the Pro races to have on an 88 inch gear, while on several of the amateur 6’s or 3 days they are usually restricted to an 88 inch gear. Well this just does not work to well when a few other damn strong teams are rocking a bit of a bigger gear…I am running the all might 88 (49×15). Lets just say it gets to a point where one can only spin so fast as the other teams are rolling the bigger gear like it is nothing…..Tuft and Bell from Symetrics. The craziest thing was when my teammate crashed with 143 laps to go of the 160 laps total and I had to go solo until he was able to get back in….well funny thing is…he did not get back in, so I had to do 143 laps solo. NOT FUN! I was glad I had the smaller gear on, but it only gets bigger and bigger when you have to roll it by yourself.
So the Burnaby 6 is under way with Tuft and Symetrics killing us all, Friedman and Pearce having some bad luck with a rolled tyre, a broken saddle…fixed with duck tape, and having to not run in to me as they all lap me for the 27th time as I am attempting to just finish the damn thing.
TRACK TRACK TRACK