Some of the most progressive road races in the US were in attendance at last weekend’s Road Race Management workshop on green running events. Everyone had good news and great ideas to share, but I was most impressed by the strides these three events are making:

The AT&T Austin Marathon is a member of the Greenteam that’s being promoted by Runner’s World and Nature’s Path Organic–the only concerted effort I’ve seen that draws attention to the good work many events are doing. (In fact, absent a sponsor conflict with Nature’s Path, I cannot see why every event that is making tangible progress toward environmentally responsible goals and objectives wouldn’t want to be a part of the Greenteam.)

In addition to being a Greenteam member, the AT&T Austin Marathon features a few green innovations that didn’t show up anywhere else in my pre-workshop survey of running events:

• teams of kayakers from the Austin Rowing Center retrieve items discarded in Lady Bird Lake
• solar-powered generators at start and finish lines, solar-powered stage
• farmer’s market at the finish line
• official race vehicles and trucks on racecourse use biodiesel fuel
• commuter (carbon) offsets available for purchase online

It’s a good thing the folks in Austin are Greenteam members–I couldn’t find any mention of these efforts anywhere on the event’s own Web site. For all they do, they should be shouting from the rooftops!

The ING Hartford Marathon is another green leader, and another event that should be proudly telling folks all about their efforts. The only real mention of green initiatives I could find on the ING Hartford Marathon Web site was this news blurb:

United Technologies, our longtime sponsor and one of the most environmentally concerned companies in the world, is now our Presenting Green Sponsor. UTC’s experts will continue to work with us to become the most sustainable athletic event in the country. In 2007, the water bubbler designed and built by UTC engineers and powered by Vital Water saved 10,000 plastic bottles from the local landfill. You can expect more, or should we say less environmental impact from the event in 2008, thanks to United Technologies.

Since the folks in Hartford don’t seem to want to toot their own horn I will. Here’s their stated environmental policy, which appeared in the pre-workshop survey I conducted, but nowhere else that I could find:

The Hartford Marathon Foundation will take all possible measures to reduce its carbon footprint and will promote, educate and encourage all participants, volunteers and spectators to do the same.

Bravo! But why keep it a secret?

Of the three events that impress me the most, the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge does the best job touting its successes. It has also taken on the biggest challenge, staging 13 events in six different countries, involving some 250,000 runners!

Behind the tagline Teaming Up For A Greener Tomorrow, JP Morgan Chase not only strives to make a relevant difference in each event’s market, but they make a systematic effort through both pre- and post-event publicity to 1) tell folks what they are hoping to accomplish, and 2) follow-up with an accurate accounting of how they met their objectives.

And, not only do the folks at JP Morgan Chase tell their own green news, they also profile corporate challenge teams that are doing the green thing.

I was never the most aggressive PR guy in the world (Nike’s position in the marketplace typically meant the media would call me), but I would strongly encourage any event that is making an effort to go green to follow JP Morgan Chase’s example on the publicity front. For as much good as they do, the folks in Austin and Hartford are missing a great opportunity.

The status quo for today’s participant sporting events is shockingly wasteful.

If you wonder just how wasteful, read this post on another blog I keep. It talks about a bike race I do that accounts for nearly 500,000 miles driven by race participants over the course of a weekend!

On the brighter side, there’s a movement afoot to reduce the impact of running events, triathlons, bike races and the like. Just as more and more people are becoming familiar with the threats of global warming, so, too, are everyday athletes becoming more concerned about the tremendous side effects of the events they participate in regularly.

Lee and I are pleased to be a part of the effort to create more environmentally responsible participant sporting events. For both of us, it’s a logical extension of our professional careers and our active lifestyles, not to mention the role we played as Cascade Run Off Race Committee members in 1981–the year the Run Off rejected the status quo and offered above-the-table prize money to its winners.

We were pleased to be agents of change in 1981 and we are excited to be agents of change once again.