Chapter 452 Jake Vacations 4
Jake was thinking that this running pace was good for his new training, if he could run 50 km a day at that running pace he would definitely feel like he was training for real.
But listening to Coach Davis saying that Jake thought it was true, he didn"t know when he could train like that again and it was a good way for him to find out what his limit was after winning so many physical stats.
After the marathon, they would train the 10,000 meters and the 5,000 meters also already thinking about winning the Olympics, so Jake would not have time to further improve his pace of running the marathons.
If Jake could even manage to run in less than 2 hours he would be very happy and feel that he had realized a dream, after all that was one of the main goals for Jake in the future.
And Jake knew that he was really close to achieving this if he slowed down just 2 seconds per km in his running time he would be able to achieve that dream even if it was not official.
Shortly after Jake decided this and arranged with trainer Davis Jake came home to rest and got a surprise, Adidas representative Mike Morris had come to visit him in Miami.
Jake had told Mike to send some of their products like clothes, sneakers so that Jake could actually advertise the company as he was very well paid to do, Coach Davis had also warned Mike that Jake was going to run the Chicago marathon.
But he never expected Mike to appear in Miami at his house, especially since there were no NBA games going on and Jake was training for the Chicago marathon while on his vacation.
In fact, while Jake was in Australia, a lot of things happened in the United States and in the sports world, mainly because it was confirmed that Jake Smith would play on the Los Angeles Lakers team with Kobe Bryant who was another young NBA genius at that time and Shaquille O"Neal.
But after Jake went to Australia it was revealed that Jake had signed one of the biggest shoe contracts with Adidas, many thought Jake would sign with Nike and that was surprising to many, especially since Adidas had already managed to hire Kobe Bryant with another multi-million dollar contract.
Luckily the values of the contract were not revealed because of the efficiency of the representatives of Adidas and David Falk, for sure in a few more months the values of the negotiation would be revealed.
But that was what they wanted because when everyone forgot about this story in a few months when the values are revealed to Adidas it would be news again, Jake"s other contracts were also surprising making him one of the highest-paid players in the NBA since his first season.
But not all of this was good for Adidas and other companies, normally Jake would have already done a commercial campaign or a television commercial for Adidas and these other companies, but as NBA lockout the companies thought wisely that it would not be a good idea to do something like that.
But Jake knew through David Falk and that it was confirmed by Mike that Adidas was preparing a great marketing strategy and a product line with his brand for the next few years, Jake even had the idea for sneakers and decided to use his brand. to avoid having copyright issues in the future with Adidas.
Jake learned that Adidas was already making a shoe that would be his trademark with Adidas, there would be two shoes, one for basketball and one for running, the running shoe would be called Adidas JKS Velocity, and the basketball shoe would only be Adidas JKS 1.
The sneakers would be black with blue and purple details, the two sneakers were almost the same and very beautiful, but one was for elite runners in marathons and the other was for playing basketball or just walking with them on the street.
Jake had the number 7 of the s.h.i.+rt that was his favorite and would be his brand in the NBA, so Adidas would make a jacket with Jake"s brand called Adidas JKS 7, Jake wore the number 7 by his own choice in the Tar Heels team and would use the same number on the Los Angeles Lakers team.
After all, the s.h.i.+rt 7 he wore on the Tar Heels team had been retired and he wanted to continue wearing it on the next teams he played, Jake was happy with his two sneakers and hoped they would sell well.
"Sorry for coming to see you, Jake, but I needed to talk to you and I took advantage of the fact that I had to deliver some Adidas products and brought them to you."
"It"s okay, Mike, I appreciate you bringing the products to me."
Jake asked Mike to enter his house and also helped to carry the boxes he had brought, inside one of the boxes he had the sneakers he had ordered, in the 90s among the best-selling sneakers most were from Nike and few were from Adidas.
Of course, Adidas wouldn"t give Jake a Kobe Bryant sneaker if he didn"t ask, so Jake received some of Adidas"s most popular sneakers and also had it for his mom, Mike said that when Jake was in Los Angeles they would send a lot more sneakers to him.
Jake received jackets, blouses, T-s.h.i.+rts, pants and many other products just as he had requested, he did not mind his training and also the next marathon to go with some of the Adidas products.
He would also go to the city with some of these clothes and if he was photographed he would advertise as he should, Mike said which shoes he should wear in the Chicago marathon and Jake accepted the shoes and found it comfortable.
"So, as I said to you before I came here to say something important, your coach told me that you are going to race in Chicago, so I wanted to ask if you could also run the Athens Cla.s.sic Marathon."
"Surely you must know and know that it is one of the most difficult marathons and has an important historical value, so the company wanted you to run there if it was possible after running in Chicago because we want to promote the company and you also in Europe where you have the most fans."
Jake didn"t know that most of his fans were from Europe and he only went there a few times, but if that were true he really thought he could be sure he would have to go there to partic.i.p.ate in a marathon, especially since the Adidas was a European company.
Jake had his current world record made in the Berlin marathon that was in Germany where Adidas was headquartered, and he didn"t really think about partic.i.p.ating in more marathons in Europe, but with an invitation from the Adidas company he would accept."
"It"s okay for me, I can recover before the Athens marathon and go running there, I didn"t know I had a lot of fans in Europe."
"Okay, thanks for that Jake, you seem to have a lot of fans in Europe and Asia too, you played basketball in some cities in Europe when you were younger and also won some important marathons there, so it was natural for you to receive more attention of the audience there."
"Furthermore, it seems that it was known that your mother was of Spanish descent and that is why you received more attention from there, you certainly have a lot of fans in the United States too, but as the United States has many stars in basketball and athletics for while your fame is not as great as theirs."
"And the fans you have in Asia are because you won an important marathon in Tokyo and Asians are very fond of basketball too and have a greater identification with you too."
After hearing Mike"s explanation he can understand, surely Adidas had done research with fans to find out where Jake was popular before they decided to sign with him, it was true that his mother was of Spanish descent and so Jake didn"t care to say that he had European descent as well.
And Jake also knew that in the future because the economy in China has become so strong, basketball fans there have started buying a lot of NBA products and many players have become popular in China because of that.
After that Mike talked to Jake for a while before he left, Mike was not like John and could not be in all of his marathons and would only be in Athens because Adidas asked Jake to run there.
But Jake knew that some Gatorade representatives would naturally be at the Chicago marathon, they were an athlete drink company and supported the marathons and sponsored Jake mainly.
The other companies would also send representatives, but they would not advertise there because they did not sponsor the marathon and therefore could not hinder the sponsors of the marathon.
Gatorade sponsored many of the big marathons and it wouldn"t be a problem for them to advertise, for them to sponsor an athlete like Jake would be much better than just sponsoring the marathons.
Adidas and other companies also planned to start sponsoring marathons in the coming years and all of this was related to Jake, for sure these companies intended to renew sponsors.h.i.+p contracts with Jake if he had no problems with scandals and played well in the NBA as everyone expected.
When Jake thought that the surprises were over a good surprise that happened to him, the Chevrolet company had sponsored Jake too and naturally had to get something from Jake, but with this NBA situation, they couldn"t just like other companies do a new commercial with him.
So they had the great idea to send Jake two Chevrolet corvette zr1 1990, which was one of the good cars that Jake thought to buy, so Jake asked to deliver one of them in Miami and another one in his house in Los Angeles.