All the News That’s Fit

Whether you like it or not, this time of year marks the frenzied pinnacle of our culture’s commitment to consumerism. Many of us find the buying of gifts stressful and headache inducing, especially if you are trying to think of a gift for that athlete friend who already has everything. The typical response is to just throw up our hands in exasperation and head to the nearest bike shop to purchase yet another item that will sit, barely used, in their overstuffed garage or closet.

Magazine articles dealing with ‘green’ gifting are hardly helpful, as their suggestions still promote the consumption of yet more products, albeit manufactured in a more sustainable way. While it may be made from bamboo, is that Chinese-made jacket really that eco-friendly?

After giving this subject some thought, I wanted to share some of my suggestions for holiday gifts you might want to consider for your athlete friends.

Turn a race photo into something special. With digital photos, you can now take that great picture of you hugging your spouse after she finishes her first Ironman and transform it into pretty much anything you can imagine (mug, dog leash, mouse pad, snow globe etc.).
Make your own energy bars. On long rides and after workouts, I prefer “real” food over pre-packaged, bomb shelter-worthy energy bars. Well-wrapped, they keep nicely in the freezer. I prefer Moosewood Restaurant’s nut butter granola bars (from their Dessert cookbook). You can search for other recipes worth trying online or make up your own.
Blade their ride. I recently stumbled across the BLADE, a tailpipe attachment that greatly reduces CO2 emissions and increases fuel efficiency. If your athlete friend drives quite a bit to swim practices or races, this might be well appreciated! (Yes, this is on my own list to Santa.)
One-on-one technique sessions. Improved form can make a world of difference in your speed and it sometimes takes a practiced eye to catch necessary changes. If there’s a running or swimming technique guru in your area, buy your athlete friends an individual session. I’d recommend they bring a video camera, as you can absorb only so many suggestions while you’re above lactate threshold!
Massage package. Ahhhhh… massage – so wonderful for recovery. Just make sure you find a good sports or deep-tissue massage therapist. If you’re athlete friends already see a massage therapist, I’d recommend an acupuncture, yoga or pilates package.
Help them eat locally. Buy your athlete friends a share of a local community farm through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project. Every week, they’ll receive a crate chock full of delicious, more nutritious, less CO2-producting produce. Another great option is to buy a yearly membership to your local Cooperative market. Yum… bulk bins.
Carbon offsets. Did your friend do the Laguna Phuket Triathlon? Why not calculate the tons of CO2 they produced to get there and offset their travel by donating to a worthy project?
Make a donation to a worthy organization. For the person who has everything, think about giving a donation in their name to an environmental cause, or a charity that serves the less fortunate. Think about their sporting interests when choosing a worthy cause, such as the Right to Play or Girls on the Run.

While this is by no means an extensive list, hopefully there are a couple of suggestions that might be useful. When thinking of a gift, try to keep the following three characteristics in mind: Sustainability, Practicality and Proximity (buy local!).

Happy Holidays!
Sarah

This past weekend, I traveled to the Bay Area to participate in the San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island. After a long season, I was looking forward to finishing up the year with a solid race in one of my favorite cities. Turns out I finished first in the elite women’s race!

While I love the city of San Francisco, man-made Treasure Island, a former Naval base in the San Francisco Bay, is hardly the most appealing venue for a race. Since being decommissioned in 1997, maintenance on the island’s infrastructure has suffered and the roads are notoriously bad for riding — they are a veritable minefield of potholes and loose gravel. Athletes get flat tires on this course every year and I’m no exception having flatted a few years ago.

While Tri California does a great job running the race, and the venue is easily accessible from the Bay Bridge, the rundown nature of the venue is a deterrent for athletes. But the good news is that Treasure Island is about to receive a green facelift, making it a model in sustainability.

Starting in 2009, Treasure Island and neighboring Yerba Buena Island are scheduled to begin their transformations. The first step inthe process is to finish the massive clean-up project started by the Navy of removing the remaining petroleum, solvents, metals, and other toxic substances. An outside development firm will then tackle the extensive construction project, turning the island into a high-density residential area. Also proposed is a ferry terminal facing San Francisco, a wind farm, an organic farm, parkland and tidal marshes.

In all, 5,500 units of LEED-certified housing are proposed in the form of several low-rise and a few high-rise buildings. In all, the islands will house about 13,500 residents. And about 30% of the units are required to be affordable – meaning, they must be within reach of households making the median household income for San Francisco.

An impressive amount of attention is being placed on water quality for the island. The developers look to recycle water with a small-footprint, state-of-the-art treatment facility. And they are integrating artificial wetlands for storm water runoff treatment and are planning to build infiltration systems to minimize storm-water runoff including living roofs, storing roof runoff, and using porous road materials.

While the proposed building process may put a damper on the near-term future of the Treasure Island Triathlon, I look forward to the redevelopment of the island with great anticipation.

Our country tends to be shortsighted in our development of land, wastefully building further and further out from urban centers by creating sprawling energy-hungry suburbs and exburbs. This was a trend that was glaringly apparent when I raced in Dallas.

Treasure Island, on the other hand, offers a chance to redevelop existing urban property. Hopefully, it's a sign of a shift in our country to more sustainable building.

In regards to the triathlon, I can’t imagine a better place to race when Treasure Island's green facelift is complete. Athletes will be able to take a 10-minute ferry from downtown San Francisco and enjoy the island itself as much as the incredible views of the Bay that it already has. I’ll also bet that the road surfaces will be greatly improved!

For more information, check out these links:

http://www.sfgov.org/site/treasureisland_index.asp

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/15/DDG7DG7HVP1.DTL

http://gliving.tv/architecture-design/san-franciscos-green-treasure-island-development/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island_development

9.18.08 A few months ago, when Athletes for a Fit Planet offered to offset the carbon emissions from my travel, I was absolutely overjoyed. I am painfully aware of the negative impact that my frequent, long flights have on the environment and had wanted to do something about it.

The fact that my air travel pumps tons of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere remains; carbon offsets don’t atone for my global warming sins, but rather support projects designed to reduce emissions. In an athletic context, I see it like skipping a workout, but eating a really healthy dinner; good, but not making up for my misdeeds. Once I had determined that Athletes for a Fit Planet would offset my emissions, however, the main question for me was how to ensure that my offsets were a meaningful gesture and not an environmental tithe, something that makes me feel better about my travels but accomplishes little or nothing?
Prior to starting my research, I knew that the carbon offset world was an unregulated Wild West filled with promise, but with some questionable delivery on the part of the suppliers. Even so, I was unprepared for the variability in the quality of carbon offset. To go return to my former analogy, carbon offsets present a variety of choices much like my healthy dinner could: organic or conventionally grown produce, free-range or factory-farmed, local or imported products, and vegan or meat-based options. While all are better for me and for the environment than a fast-food meal, I always want to know that I am getting the absolute best bang for my buck. As a general rule of thumb, if it seems too good to be true, it almost always is.
That being said, the best offset projects are not necessarily the most expensive ones. With some good research, however, I was able to tease apart the higher quality projects and providers from the lower quality ones.
The first direction that I wanted to head was to forestation, or sequestration, projects and I admit that my decision was purely emotional and bio-centric. If a healthier ecosystem is a by-product, wouldn’t that make it even better? The trouble is that reforestation tends to be a low quality project in terms of carbon offsets. Much to my dismay, offsets are reversed when trees die in the case of fire or pest infestation.
Furthermore, little is known about how forests store carbon in the long run, especially in the face of predicted climate change. While the protection of forests is certainly important, there are better ways to invest one’s offset funds.
In figuring out the best offset projects, I learned that it is important to keep “additionality” in mind, as well as quality. Additionality addresses this question: Would the project happen without the funding from the sale of carbon offsets? If so, your emissions will not be offset by such a project! Furthermore, there needs to be a clear quantification of the benefit, permanence to the project, clear ownership (easier with direct, onsite reductions), future monitoring and verification and registration of the project.
I’ve found that two carbon offset projects that fulfill these requirements are the building of wind turbines, helping us transition away from fossil fuels, and the capturing of methane, keeping this greenhouse gas from reaching the atmosphere.
While my research has pointed me in the right direction as to the type of carbon offset project that I would support, I now have to determine the ideal company. I will keep you posted on my progress!

Send Sarah your questions and comments to info@afitplanet.com

In the coming months, Athletes for a Fit Planet will be chronicling Sarah Groff’s travels around the world as she represents the US in the ITU World Cup Triathlon Race Series. Sarah competes at the highest level of the sport and is currently the top-ranked US women in the World Cup standings.

Sarah typically travels twice a month, often flying half-way round the world to compete. So travel is a big part of her job.

The problem is that air travel is one of the top contributors to greenhouse gas emissions globally. It contributes about 5% to the total global greenhouse gas emissions a year. And aviation is one of the fastest growing cause of global warming. According to one source, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by air travel doubled between 1990 and 2004. What’s more, some scientific studies have suggested that high-altitude emissions of greenhouse gases are the most harmful to the planet.

So not only do we have a problem but we’re heading in the wrong direction.

That’s why FitPlanet is stepping up and offsetting Sarah’s greenhouse gas emissions for an entire year. Not only will we be neutralizing the impact of her travels, but we hope to inform athletes like you about the importance of reducing your own carbon footprint and maybe encourage you to consider offsetting your own emissions.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of confusion about what offsets are, how they work, and the value they produce. FitPlanet is the first to admit that offsets are not a cure for global warming. The only solution is a reduction on greenhouse gases and the adoption of wind, solar, ocean wave and water current power, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources that have a zero or low carbon footprint.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll explore the issue of offsets, calculate Sarah’s carbon footprint, and look at a variety of options for how she can offset her greenhouse gas emissions. We hope you’ll join us on the journey.

Stay Fit,

Bruce
bruce@afitplanet.com

I have disproportionately large feet. With a men’s 9-and-a-half shoe size, I should be a giant, but instead I reached a mere 5′ 8″, much to my dismay (and my smaller-footed, 5′ 10″ older sister’s secret delight). My feet are large enough to have earned me the moniker “Sausage” from my friends, due to my tendency to leave large, wet footprints on the kitchen floor.
While I’ve long accepted the size of my feet and realize that they will never get smaller, I do try to avoid having them swell in size. With air travel, fluids can collect and pool in one’s ankles and feet, resulting in what I call the “marshmallow effect.” As I fly quite a bit, most recently travelling to Hungary and Austria to race, I’ve been experimenting with compression and onboard exercises to great affect. My feet will never get smaller, but I can avoid the onset of swelling to keep them from getting any bigger.
Like my actual footprint, my carbon footprint is disproportionately large, due to my frequent air travel. (Carbon Footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide) produced by an individual through the use of services or products.)
This is of great concern to me. Unfortunately, in order to race on the ITU World Cup circuit, I have to travel internationally as currently there is but one US-based ITU race in Des Moines, Iowa. Although most athletes may not travel as much as I do, we all emit greenhouse gases when we travel to races. And while sailing or swimming to Kona might be an option for some, carbon-producing air travel is the only realistic option (and much more conducive to one’s taper).
While my footprint is larger than most, there are ways we all can minimize our carbon footprint. Here are a few suggestions for avoiding that excess environmental “swelling” associated with travel:
– Take the shortest flight path possible. With the rising cost of airfare, many of us are tempted by the cheaper options, which may take us on a less direct, and thus less eco-friendly, trajectory.
– Fly on larger planes when given an option. Per person, smaller planes produce more emissions than larger planes.
– Fly non-stop. Shorter flights produce more greenhouse gases than longer ones per mile. Plus, you are less likely to lose your bike without a connection!
– Drive to a race with a buddy. Driving together is more eco-friendly. Added benefit: a road trip is also a great test for the viability of a new relationship.
– Offset your carbon emissions. After calculating the emissions produced in travel, buy carbon credits to offset your trip. While reducing emissions is the best solution, offsetting helps fund projects that take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and is a great way to mitigate some of the damage.

I wish you all the best in your travelling and racing!

Sarah

Email Sarah at sarah@afitplanet.com

Welcome to the first blog by Sarah Groff, professional triathlete, environmentalist, and now our TriAthlete for a Fit Planet. Starting next week, Sarah will have her own page on afitplanet.com where she’ll share her thoughts about training, racing, and, of course, the environment.
FitPlanet will track Sarah’s travels, and together we’ll calculate her greenhouse gas emissions and choose a fund, or funds, to offset her carbon footprint.
Send Sarah an email if you’d like to receive her blog by email as soon as we post it.
Welcome Sarah!

Bruce Rayner
Chief Green Officer
Athletes for a Fit Planet

7.1.08 Following a recent kids’ triathlon, my parents shared a scene with me that they witnessed involving one young girl and a water cup.

After being handed a drink at an aid station, the youthful racer continued the remainder of the race with her cup in hand, unwilling to toss her waste to the roadside. Upon crossing the finish line, she passed her cup to her mother. After the mom unceremoniously dumped the liquid onto the pavement, the young eco-friendly racer implored her mother to recycle her cup.

While it may not be practical for athletes to have quite this level of ecological zeal while racing (can you imagine carrying all of the waste you produce over the length of an Ironman?!), we all can take action to make less of an environmental impact in our racing, training, and daily lives.

Although I have always tried to apply my strong environmental ethic to my pursuit of sport, I recognize that some aspects of my triathlon life are incompatible with my desire to be green. As an athlete competitive on the ITU World Cup circuit, I have the privilege to travel all over the world to race. I’ve been able to race in places as far-flung as Qatar, South Africa, New Zealand, and China. While certainly an incredible opportunity, the carbon footprint of my travels can’t be neutralized by my emphasis on organic foods or in-town trips on my bike.

Luckily for me, Athletes for a Fit Planet is offsetting the carbon emissions from my travels. That doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t do more to reduce my impact on the earth on a daily basis. Using this blog, I hope to share my adventures (and misadventures, I’m sure!) in racing and training as an aspiring green athlete.

In the coming months, I look forward to sharing my perspective, observations, and experiences as a professional triathlete. Any and all comments and questions are welcome!

Stay tuned and happy racing!
Sarah
sarah@afitplanet.com

6.11.08 – Athletes for a Fit Planet is pleased to announce the sponsorship of up-and-coming professional triathlete Sarah Groff, a member of the USA Triathlon National Team.

Twenty-six-year-old Groff (pictured at left) has been a professional triathlete for the past four years competing at the highest level of the sport. On June 8, she placed 7th in the elite women’s race at the International Triathlon Union (ITU) World Championships in Vancouver, Canada. Groff is a committed environmentalist, earning a BA in Environmental Studies (Conservation Biology) from Middlebury College VT in 2004.

“Because of Sarah’s passion for environmental issues and her status as a world-class athlete she is the ideal spokesperson for FitPlanet,” said Bruce Rayner, Chief Green Officer, Athletes for a Fit Planet. “We are thrilled to have Sarah onboard.”

“I’m excited to be working with FitPlanet,” said Groff. “This is more than a company, it’s a movement. Everyone can and should do their part, but it all starts with education and an understanding of our individual impact on the environment and how we can positively contribute to the bigger picture. Anyone can diagnose the problem; few can offer a solution. Fit Planet is different.”

FitPlanet will offset 100% of Groff’s carbon emissions produced by her busy training and racing travel schedule. Her ITU commitments include one or two races a month around the world in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

“I have to travel a lot and struggle with the carbon footprint I’m creating. I’m sure other athletes have similar qualms,” said Groff.

And launching in July, Groff with have her own webpage on the FitPlanet website that will include regular entries chronicling her racing and training as well as comments on her environmental activities and concerns. FitPlanet will keep track online of Groff’s travels and calculate the greenhouse gas emissions.

“We hope that Sarah’s blog and FitPlanet’s commitment to offsetting her carbon emissions will raise awareness within the athlete community about environmental issues and the importance of our collective responsibility to help curb global warming,” said Rayner.

About Sarah Groff
Sarah is a full time professional triathlete who is committed to the highest level of performance in International Olympic distance competition. In January 2005, after graduating from Middlebury College with a BA as a double major in Environmental Studies (Conservation Biology) and Studio Art, Sarah moved to Boulder, Colorado, to train with coach and former World Champion Siri Lindley. She is a member of the USA Triathlon National Team and has represented the U.S. at the International Triathlon Union (ITU) Elite World Championships in 2006, 2007, and most recently in 2008, where she placed 7th in the elite women’s race on June 8. Currently Sarah is ranked 14th, in the 2008 ITU World Cup elite women rankings and ranked as the 2nd American.

Groff is already looking ahead to her post-competition career and plans to become an environmental lawyer. In the meantime, she is excited to work with Athletes for a Fit Planet and educate others about the impact our daily activities have on the global environment. Look for more exciting news from Sarah in the coming weeks and months.

For more information on Sarah Groff click here or contact her agent, Douglas Eldridge, DLE Sports Management Group, at 202- 580-9615 or douglas@dlesports.com.