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Fair. Your lunacy is playing slight part in this approach ;) But you get my point.
If I was in your shoes (probably not midfoot) I'd favour a little admin over self-sponsoring. You might even be able to take time off work without having to sacrifice mortgage payments with sponsorship.
amey-
Yeah, someone willing to throw large sums of cash at me would be nice, but see previous comments about asking for help. You need to be able to help the company in question before they'll part with dosh and I'm not sure I want to spend my leadup bigging up products, though it's about time Specialized gave me a bike, since I've spent enough time and money on riding theirs around the planet..
Also, "a little admin"? I can barely get paperwork sorted to pay myself, let alone maintain the household bills and you should know by now where I stand with navigational and logistical planning...
The missus can maintain the mortgage while I fanny about on bikes. :)
hippy
I'm not afraid of asking for help - I got sponsors and observers on board for my LEJOG attempt a couple of years ago.
There's enough to worry about and plan without me having to deal with sending out requests for sponsorship letters and wondering if I'll get any help, etc. That's why I've put LEJOG on hold until someone else steps in and manages it. I'm not doing it again unless someone else sorts out all the other people that need to be involved. You can't organise AND ride - I tried and had a meltdown.
There's logistical issues with sponsorship as well. If it's equipment sponsorship, say a bike, then I ask around and someone says 'yes, we'd love you to ride our bike'. Great, but then what? If it's a large company, it might take them a month or more for the various departments to approve it and then actually get me the bike. That's a month I should've been riding and tweaking.
If I use a sponsors kit and then find something much better, I can't just drop their stuff and use the better option.
Anyway, racing as a "Privateer" is better than saying "Sponsored by..." in a self-supported bikepacking race. It's like riding fixed and passing people riding gears ;)