Small Business

Working Alongside a Pro: Inspiring or Terrifying?

By Jeff Haden

Updated on: July 8, 2011 / 8:42 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

This post is part of The 11,500 Foot View, a series where I count down my attempt to accomplish an impossible goal, remain in the good graces of my family, run a business, stay sane, and blog about it.
Say you're a golfer; wouldn't it be awesome to play a round at Augusta with Phil Mickelson?

Dream on.

Or say you're a baseball fan. Wouldn't it be cool to step on the field at Yankee Stadium and take batting practice with Derek Jeter?

Good luck with that too.
The divide between the average fan and professional athletes has never been wider. Except in cycling, where even the most casual cyclist (like me) can ride the same roads, climb the same mountains, clip into similar bikes, and sometimes even ride with professionals.

Pros like Team Radio Shack rider and 2010 U.S. National Road Race champion Ben King, at 21 the youngest winner in the history of the event.

Barring an invite to the UCI Road World Championships, Ben will like me (well, maybe not so much like me) be riding the Alpine Loop Gran Fondo on September 24th. Since he lives over the mountains near Charlottesville, it's a route he's used for training, occasionally with my probably-wondering-what-he-got-himself-into coach, Jeremiah Bishop.

"Jeremiah says his Alpine loop is reminiscent of Austrian settings," Ben told me. "Five days and 528 miles into the 8-day Tour of Austria, I can verify his comparison. The route qualifies as epic, the sort of ride we pros reserve for our biggest days of training.
"I've raced and trained all over the world and I still prefer cycling in the Blue Ridge mountains."
Here's the alpine loop route; feel free to click the link. (I won't; my stomach sinks every time I look at the altitude profile.)

So while I'll never take batting practice with Jeter, I will be riding with Jeremiah and Ben, at least for the first five minutes or so.

Awesome company; still, in some ways I hope I'm only with them that long.

One of my fears (I have a bunch) is that Jeremiah will decide I should tuck in behind him and follow his wheel to the base of the first climb. On paper a gracious gesture, but when facing 2,000 feet of climbing at an 8% average grade the last thing I may want is to be with Jeremiah and Ben.

Then again, maybe not. Watching people operate at an incredibly high level -- in any field -- is an almost magical experience. The supremely talented perform in ways the rest of us only dream about. Pros like Jeremiah and Ben are like athletic Six Sigmas, with skills surpassing 99.99966% of all the cyclists in the world.

So maybe it would be fun to watch them disappear around that first bend.

Either way, I know it will be fun to catch up hours later at the finish, where for a few moments our gulf in fitness and skill and talent won't matter. I'll have ridden the same roads, climbed the same climbs, and struggled and suffered and persevered.

I'll be a cyclist, however pale by comparison, in the company of cyclists.

Pretty cool.

Take that, Yankee Stadium.

79 days to go.
Previously:

Photos courtesy flickr users fsteel770 and The Dublin Reeds