Fat Cyclist joins Team RadioShack at training camp!

This is one of the coolest stories I’ve heard in a while.  The short(ish) version is this:  Elden, THE Fat Cyclist (you can read about him here) wrote up a post where he said (in jest) it was time for a career change and he decided that a pro cyclist sounded like a great job.  In this post he included an open letter to Johan Bruyneel, who is the manager for Team RadioShack – the new pro cycling team that Lance Armstrong is on.  Unexpectedly, Johan replied to ‘Fatty’ (I can’t figure out a way to link to an individual blog post on Johan’s blog, so you’ll have to look in the archives for the 1st reply) and told him he’d be welcome to come to training camp if he could raise $10K for LIVESTRONG and $10K for World Bicycle Relief, and then set a stretch goal of $25K each with the reward of a Trek Madone road bike!

According to his next post, Elden describes how he thought about it and came up with a great strategy.  He decided that, assuming he made it to the stretch goal of $50K, he’d give the bike away as a prize to one of the lucky donors.  In addition to that, he managed to also get his hands on a 2010 Gary Fisher Superfly mountain bike, which he would also give away – again, provided he made it to $50K.  I like the way he associated the Gary Fisher bike with the LIVESTRONG charity and the Trek Madone with the World Bicycle Relief – I guess his thinking was that most Lance fans would be more apt to donate to LIVESTRONG, but they’d also be more apt to want the Madone as opposed to the Gary Fisher.  Very clever.

Well, in no time, he hit the first goal of $20K ($10K to each charity) which means he’s off to training camp with Team RadioShack, and it didn’t take long to hit the stretch goal of $50K either which means the bikes WILL now be given away to someone who has donated.

Once Johan saw that his stretch goal of $50K was hit so quickly, he upped the stakes again – go read his current blog post and you’ll see that he’s now sweetened the pot even further with a trip to France to see the final stage of the TdF if Fatty can reach $100K ($50K to each charity) by this Friday.  Elden has updated his contest to include this trip, and he WILL make it to 100K, I can guarantee that.  As I’m writing this post, he’s sitting at $39,695.00 for LIVESTRONG and $42,038.00 for World Bicycle Relief and it’s only Tuesday.  Funny that the World Bicycle Relief amount isn’t a multiple of $5…

Anyway, as I said, I think this is a pretty cool story.  If you want to donate, and get a chance at these awesome prizes, or maybe you just want to feel good that you helped out some great charities, then I’ve included links below for both.  At the very least, check out how close Elden is to reaching that crazy stretch goal of $100K.

LIVESTRONG page

World Bicycle Relief page

Good luck at training camp Elden!

UPDATE: The winners have been announced! Sadly I wasn’t one of them.  :)