A friend once told me that if you hang around experts in any field long enough, you can probably fake your way into a job.  I was skeptical at first, until I found out that after years of dating computer geeks, she landed a system administration job at a Fortune 500 company, and has since moved up to director.

The past 5 years have only reinforced the above notion.  I’m pretty sure that not only can I describe how the sodium-potassium pump works, but if held at gunpoint, I may even be able to recite how the Krebs cycle functions, intubate a patient, put him to sleep, and give them Versed to forget it ever happened.  And this with barely a 7th grade biology class under my belt.

However, as exciting as drug induced anesthesia sounds, it is not nearly as interesting as passing out under your own effort while an entire cadre of cyclists pass you by; consequently, this is about something else entirely.

Late fall is the time of the year when professional athletes are usually looking for a sponsor.  I’ve been around professional athletes long enough to recognize the late autumn jitters when scoring a sponsor, a team, or a new contract.  I’ve heard both sides of the negotiation long enough, that I’m now beginning to think that I should get myself a sponsor, just in case software engineering doesn’t work as expected.  After all, you need some sort of backup, financial diversification of sorts, and multiple streams of income as it’s called nowadays.

After speaking with Jason and Hadji, I realized that sponsors are not as interested in a podium athlete, inasmuch as a good story that sells.  Who cares about the shy guy on the top of the podium with no story?  We’re more interested on the one-legged professional jump-roper who overcame an abusive father, an ugly girlfriend, has a VO2max of 20, but at the very least can write entertaining prose and has lots of Facebook friends.  That, my friends, is me: a free-agent cyclist with absolutely no wins (apart from Strava records on climbs no one knows about), a shitty bike, the body of a starving east-Kenyan runner, and a blog that roughly translated means “fuck it, I’m doing it anyhow”.

So… I drafted my proposal to RA Racing Apparel, so I could champion their brand.  I would race in the lowest of the cycling categories, would even do charity speed walking events (with pizzazz), and would look anorexic like real endurance athletes.  I explained to my sponsor that readers have more in common with me, the every day man, than with a 130lbs cyclist that climbs Alp d’Huez in under 42 minutes.  Who are you more likely to see on the street and ask “why, where did you buy that jersey”?  Cadel Evans, Lance Armstrong, or a middle of the pack cat 5 racer that looks cool in tights?  Seriously, this is a no brainer.

Anyways, after much hand waving and negotiating, RA Racing Apparel has agreed to sponsor all my events in exchange for parading their clothing brand and reporting on races I will most definitely suck at. All while agreeing that I can’t really train that much, because physical exercise lowers the blood flow to my brain, thus rendering my day job activities worthless.  Oh…and of course, to be considered a professional athlete, one needs actual money, clothes alone won’t do. So we’re in the process of negotiating a salary– somewhere between $1 and $2/month.  I already have a letter of intent!

So stay tuned, because I’ll be living in the RV, traveling to races, drinking Gatorade mixed with whiskey, and trying not to get upgraded to a more serious category.