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:

(more…)

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.