The Green Ostrich

This week, the Pro Trail Runners Association (PTRA) published Environmental Ethical Boundaries for Trail Running Competitions. The boundaries and guidelines address the need for environmental consideration by events as the sport of trail running grows. The document sets out both “redline” boundaries, which are “musts” for events, and recommendations. If events do not abide by redline items, they may face public call-outs and boycotts. The recommended items are, as the name implies, simply recommendations, but not abiding by them may still lead to public call-outs by PTRA. 

PTRA is a non-profit for the benefit of professional trail runners focused on the rights of athletes and athlete health all while adhering to the values of fair play, sustainability and equality. Professional trail runners can join as members.

Is this a helpful document? Does it go far enough? 

As a non-professional runner, it’s easy to armchair quarterback this – especially when it comes to why some of the recommended actions aren’t redline items. With that perspective in mind, I think this document is a step in the right direction, but I hope it isn’t the final action by PTRA. I also have lots of questions. 

I won’t look at every item, but I want to touch on a few recommendations that I think may raise some eyebrows. If you want to dig deeper into the other boundaries and guidelines, it’s definitely worth reading the whole document linked to above. 

Transport 

On the surface, the transportation recommendation seems like the biggest hot button in this document. Athlete transportation (including flying) is the largest source of emissions for a large race that attracts global participants. So should athletes flying or otherwise not taking public transportation to a race be a redline item? I’d actually argue that it shouldn’t. In an ideal world, athletes wouldn’t be flying around the globe to race. And for the masses, that’s a good rule of thumb. But for a professional athlete, the calculation has to be different. As a runner living in the northeast United States, there are plenty of fun races for me to run that don’t require flying (though many are still not accessible by public transportation). But I’m not supporting my family off my racing. If a professional trail runner is living in the northeast United States, the number of “worthwhile” (i.e., potential for big payouts and/or big exposure for sponsors) races is relatively tiny. So, as in the corporate world, sometimes flying for a business trip is necessary. Similarly, in large parts of the United States, public transport is just not an option. This is a massive infrastructure issue that has to be dealt with, but if access to public transportation were a redline item, many (perhaps most?) trail races in the US would be violating that boundary and professional trail runners in the US would be detrimentally impacted. This would go against PTRA’s mission of supporting the professional trail running community.

All that said, I do think PTRA could take this recommendation a bit further by directly acknowledging the impact of air travel in the transport guideline and advocating for professional athletes to make conscious decisions about when and how often to fly for races in order to keep the business trips to a minimum.

Goodies

If you’ve read anything I’ve written, you know that I have beef with race swag. I appreciate the statement that “In all cases, goodies should be opt-in for all participants and the distribution of promotional material should be kept to a minimum.” But I wonder why this wasn’t made a redline item. Even if the elimination of all goodies is still in the recommendation category, I believe that the opt-in feature should absolutely be a redline. If anyone has thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them. 

Markings and Trash

I’m wondering if I’m missing something on these. The “Markings” recommendation is that, “Races should ensure that course markings, and evidence of aid stations be removed after the race.” This, together with the recommendation that participants and crew be prohibited from dropping trash outside of designated places (trash/recycling bins), makes no sense to me as a recommendation. In all cases, leaving any trace behind in the form of trash or course markings should absolutely be a redline item. Does anyone know what I’m missing? 

With those potential concerns aside, overall, I think this document is a net positive – the sponsorship boundary alone is extremely valuable (when in doubt follow the money). The document is not perfect, but it’s certainly a start. 

My big outstanding question is the potential impact. As a collective of professional trail runners, it seems that the members of PTRA ultimately have a responsibility to enforce these boundaries and to speak up. If PTRA declares a boycott on an event, what happens if a member still attends? And is the group loud enough to make an impact on races of all sizes? I sense it might be given the member list, but I’m not sure. I look forward to following this and seeing how it plays out and how race organizers of different sizes and in different locations around the globe respond and adjust. I hope PTRA provides public insight into how this enforcement and impact is playing out.