Posted: December 20, 2005

Athletics: Athlete Offers Unique Sponsorship Pitch

From David Monti

© 2005 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

A former distance runner for Haverford College is looking for sponsorship one penny at a time.

Brandon Rowe, who graduated last year, issued a press release last Sunday announcing that his new website, penny.runnerunner.com, is accepting donations of 1 cent for each mile he expects to log training each month. At 400 miles a month, that works at to $4 per month, or $48 per year for each of his potential sponsors who will receive a credit on his site.

"The road to the Olympics is a arduous and painful road," reads the statement in Rowe's release. "A long distance runner must run thousands of miles of preparation in order to make it to the Olympic Trials."

He must also run quality times. The best time RRW can find for Rowe (not to be confused with Aaron Rowe who ran for Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and graduated the same year) is 14:43.17 for 5000m run indoors at the Boston University FasTrack Invitational, Feb. 14, 2004.

"To get a sponsorship from a shoe company I'd have to drop a minute in the 5000 and two minutes in the 10000 at least," says a statement on his webite.

So far, no sponsors have signed up.