TriSports.com Blog

Race, Score Free Stuff, Save the Environment and Make a Difference – Part 4

Yes, I jumped ahead last week, so although this is Part 4, I am actually discussing the third item in this blog title, Save the Environment.  Responsibility towards the environment is on all of our shoulders.  If we each have the attitude that “what I do won’t make a difference,” we’d never get anywhere.  Luckily, a large number of our population DOES want our children, and their children, etc, to have the pleasure of enjoying nature.  It has always been important to TriSports.com that we do our part, as minor as it may seem, to help the greater good.  Since the founders of TriSports Racing and TriSports.com are one and the same, it is no wonder that we are making huge efforts towards making the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival more “green.”

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT – We have made a pledge to go green.  We have always been friendly to the environment, separating recyclables and hauling them back to Tucson, using as little paper as possible and more.  In 2009, however, we made this a focus and began our preparations for our 2010 attempt to become certified with the Council for Responsible Sport, or ReSport for short.  Some of the processes we implemented in 2009 included composting all of our food waste in order to reduce what ended up in landfills; doing away with print registration and print race packets for pre-registered participants in order to reduce paper usage; offering participants an opt-out of receiving a race shirt in return for a credit; utilizing compostable plates, utensils and cups to reduce landfill waste; setting up recycling stations all over the venue; having finisher awards made from recycled bike parts that are, in turn, able to be reused as key chains and bottle openers; and ensuring that our vendors attempt to reduce their impact on the environment as much as possible.  Due to these processes, we went from 3 tons of landfill waste in 2008 to only 1 ton in 2009!  We still want to bring that number down, but wow!  We have some finetuning to do in order to do well on our certification review, but 2009 was a great test year to prepare us for 2010.

What more can you expect in 2010?  A greater focus on separation of recyclables, compostables and trash.  A more eco-friendly shirt that will use water- or vegetable-based inks.  Continued borrowing and rental of equipment, reducing the need for new equipment.  Further reduction in our landfill waste with a goal of less than 2 pounds per participant.  Ride-share option added to registration.  All of these features add up to a more environmentally-friendly event, and one that you can feel good about adding to your schedule.  If you have any ideas of what we can do to further “green” our events, please feel free to let me know! 

That concludes this series, and I hope to see you at the races!  Can’t wait to sign up?  Register now!

Race, Score Free Stuff, Save the Environment and Make a Difference – Part 3

I am actually going to jump ahead this week and address the last topic in the title since there has been so much lead-in in the previous two posts.  I am hard-pressed to say which of these last two topics is most important, so I won’t.  Each is important in its own way, so you can make your own conclusions or, like me, hold each dear to your heart equally!

MAKE A DIFFERENCE – A dollar, five dollars, maybe even more than that, is a drop in the bucket to most of us.  It’s coffee on your morning commute, the change you stick in the meter when you go swimming, or upgraded shipping when you shop at TriSports.com.  It may not seem like much to us at the moment, but when you take all of those individual dollars and put them together, they become something that is way more than a drop in the bucket.  For the recipients of the Challenged Athletes Foundation, those dollars may be a new racing leg.  For the recipients of the Show Low Youth Recreation and Sports Foundation, those dollars may mean that an underprivileged child will be able to compete in community sports. 

These are the two main beneficiaries of the funds raised by the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival.  As mentioned in Part 1, TriSports Racing is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that was created solely to 1) create a race experience for the participant that is second-to-none, and 2) raise money for charity.  Over the last 6 years, we have donated over $60,000 to charity!  It is not cheap to produce a race, and so a lot of the entry fees you pay go to cover the costs of the event – insurance, permits, food, water, supplies, personnel, etc – but everything that is left over goes to help someone else.  In fact, our title sponsor, TriSports.com, actually absorbs the costs of personnel, so that removes a HUGE obligation off of TriSports Racing’s plate.  Yes, we get volunteers, but those key people who slave hours and hours, early morning until late in the night, get paid.  TriSports.com also allows TriSports Racing to piggy-back on a lot of their advertising, thus reducing those costs.  Am I tooting both of our horns?  You betcha!  I think I have good reason to do so.  If you ever want to see why, just hop over to San Diego and compete or spectate at the San Diego Triathlon Challenge.  You will see first-hand where a lot of this money goes, and you will never be the same. 

Join me next week for the final installation, Save the Environment!

Race, Score Free Stuff, Save the Environment and Make a Difference – Part 2

Scoring free stuff may, in fact, be the most popular of the four topics mentioned in this blog title, at least at the moment it all goes down.  I can assure you, however, that although it is a nice benefit of the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival, each of the future topics have a much greater global impact.  Make sure you tune in next week (and the next!) to learn how.  In the meantime, read on to see why I have included this topic…

SCORE FREE STUFF – With TriSports.com as the title sponsor, you can be assured that there will be some fantastic raffle prizes to give away.  So fantastic, in fact, that it takes 2 hours to get through all of the goodies, and people spend wads of money on extra raffle tickets (everyone gets one with their race entry, and you can score an extra one if you opt out of receiving a t-shirt) in an attempt to take home those Zipp wheels, or the multitude of run shoes, or a piece of the $2500 worth of Profile Design gear, or any number of other prizes.  We gave away over $32,000 worth of gear last year and are hoping to up that for 2010, so make sure you have plenty of cash on hand…you don’t want to miss out on your chance to take home something for almost nothing!

This year you may even have a chance to thank the manufacturers, suppliers and/or distributors yourselves with the addition of the Industry Cup Charity Challenge to our lineup!  Year after year I beg product from all of them to help us entice you all to spend more money on raffle tickets and, in turn, raise more money for charity.  More on that to come!

Race, Score Free Stuff, Save the Environment and Make a Difference – Part 1

Where can you do all 4 of these things at once?  At the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival, of course!  We started TriSports Racing, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, specifically to produce this triathlon extravaganza and donate money to charity.  With that said, let me illustrate the 4 topics of the title over a 4-part series for your reading pleasure.

RACE – The weekend lineup of events at the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival is impressive!  There is truly something for the whole family, for the beginner and advanced triathlete alike, and even for those who might not like to run.  Saturday, June 5th, we have the DeuceMan Triathlon, a half-iron distance event that combines the beauty of the White Mountains with the challenge of a race at elevation.  In fact, it may even be the highest elevation long course event in the country (not making that claim because I haven’t done the research, but it’s pretty likely)!  Starting with the DeuceMan is the Deuces Wild Aquabike.  Hate running, but love the rest?   This is for you!  While all those folks from the DeuceMan are getting off their bikes and preparing to run a half-marathon, you get to stroll across the finish line.  Pretty sweet!  For the athlete who likes to sleep in, give our Deuces Wild Olympic Distance Triathlon a try.  An 8am start gives you more time to sleep, prep, or just hang out with your pals and laugh at the suckers doing the long course event.   You won’t be laughing for long, though…your bike course intersects with theirs and you all get to do the last set of rollers heading back into Show Low.  The final event on Saturday is the most inspiring – the Youth Deuceathlon!  Watch the future of our sport get out there and race portions of the same course you did earlier in the day, only much cuter.  This event is limited to 50, so if your tyke wants to take part, make sure you register soon!   The weekend wraps up with XTERRA Deuces Wild, an off-road challenge that will have you smiling even as you inwardly curse the creators of the course.  Expect surprises if you race this one…Seton always likes to throw something special in there!

TriSports.com sponsored athlete Mike Montoya at the 2009 XTERRA Deuces Wild

Now I can’t finish talking about the race without mentioning our newest addition for this year - the Industry Cup Charity Challenge.  This “event” is a combination of the DeuceMan, the Olympic and the XTERRA and has been created specifically for members of the bike, run, swim, triathlon, endurance, etc industry!  They are always in the background, working the expos and supplying all of us with awesome equipment so that we can race, but what about them?  The challenge will pit these companies against each other in an effort to raise even more money for charity – all proceeds from this challenge will go to the charity selected by the winning team.  The winner will also get to take home a custom-made traveling trophy consisting of parts of products from each company participating in the event.

I think you can agree that there’s something for everyone at the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival, so what are you waiting for?  Register today and come see the excitement first-hand!  Stay tuned for Part 2 – Score Free Stuff!

Find Your Passion

What’s your passion?  For some, it might be quiet, seemingly endless trails.  For others, it may be a newly paved road, still closed to car traffic.  But for a few, they have found their passion in helping others by using their racing as a means to raise money for various charities.  One of those few is Clif Stargardt, longtime customer of TriSports.com and Deuces Wild participant. 

Clif embarked on his first race fundraising back 2005 in Coeur d’Alene.  A self-professed feeling of selfishness for the time spent so focused only on himself prompted him to sign up for the Janus Charity Challenge.  He chose to raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital after doing some research online.  He was very moved by the images of the children fighting cancer and the fact that St. Jude will treat children regardless of their ability to pay.   Come race day, thoughts of quitting (which had surfaced in his past iron-distance races) never even entered his mind because he felt that he had an obligation to his donors.

Fast-forward 4 more years, and Clif decided that doing Ironman Arizona was a good idea, and raising funds for St. Jude again was a given.  This time, Clif raised a whopping $3400, qualifying him for an additional donation of $750 from Janus, so a grand total of $4150 went to St. Jude.  In a tough economy, Clif still found the energy and drive to ask people to donate money…and they did.  To quote Clif, “The kids of St. Jude are racing their own Ironman, only theirs is a fight for their lives.  Their struggle makes any suffering I’m going through on race day insignificant.”  So to Clif, and all of you out there whose passion for racing is fueled by a desire to help others, you are amazing!

Clif Stargardt finishing the 2009 Ironman Arizona

Supporting Kids in Triathlon

We have a hard time saying “no” to anything a kid requests from us, as long as it is within reason.  Kids are the future of this sport and, as we all know, the incidence of childhood obesity is increasing at an alarming rate as kids sit on computers, play games and watch mindless TV.  The fact that there are kids out there who are embracing triathlon is promising, and we want to support that. 

Christian's group getting ready to start

There is a 5th grade teacher in New Jersey named Christian who has been a customer of ours since way back in the early days.  He came to me with the request of some small items for his students because he had started a running club, as well as organizing a small triathlon for any of the kids who wanted to give a tri a try.  He explained that the kids got excited about the smallest things, even his empty PowerBar boxes!  Since we usually have a large box filled with samples and promo items we have received, I went through that and sent him a bunch of goodies.  This has since become a tradition, and we have also started sending him our unused race numbers, finisher medals and awards from the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival so that he can continue to offer these great activities at little or no cost.  Christian’s drive and desire to get kids involved in a healthy lifestyle is heroic in my eyes as he is setting them up to be healthy, goal-oriented individuals for the rest of their lives.

Building for the Community

A whole crew of our staff donned hard hats and tool belts and headed out to our sponsored house on January 9th to continue work on a home being built by Habitat for Humanity.  Back on September 11th, Nik and I went out to Building Freedom Day and began construction on this home.  Four months later and it looks like a house!  This time we had 6 other staff members and a friend along to help.  Our goal was to get the home ready for stucco, so out came the rolls of chicken wire and we got busy.  In the 6 hours we had to work on the house (which goes by SO fast when you are working hard), we got it completely wrapped, plus Betty, Alison and myself got all the cracks in the eaves caulked up.  Pretty good work!  It took a lot of cutting, hammering and snipping to get everything just right. 

Nik & Debbie hammering away | Betty working on the details

We love to be involved in our community, and Habitat for Humanity gives us an opportunity to truly make a difference in a local family’s life.  What is also great is that the family is required to put in a set number of hours working on their own home, so along with the pride of ownership, the get the pride of knowing that they helped to build their own home.  One of our foremen was telling us that the  Habitat houses are so well-built that the home inspectors here in Tucson say that if they were having a home built, they would want us volunteers out there building it.  I think most of that comes from the fact that we do it because we want to and we believe in the cause (and because we likely put in 5 nails for every one that a professional contractor would!).  So if you are looking for a way to help in your community, but don’t have a ton of extra time, consider getting in touch with your local Habitat for Humanity office and help build someone’s future.

The whole crew in front of our house (from left: Nik, Alison, Scott, Kim, Susan, Charlie, Betty, Sarah & me)

The Sack Lunch Bunch

This past Saturday had members of our staff, TriSports.com sponsored athletes, TriSports Cycling team members and family and friends working together to make 100 sack lunches for delivery to some of Tucson’s homeless population.  The sack lunch crew gathered at TriSports.com on Saturday morning to assemble the lunches consisting of a PB&J sandwich, fruit, a drink, chips, crackers and candy.  Some stalwart staff, Betty and Chet, pulled bike trailers loaded with the lunches, while Alison followed in her car with more to replenish once the trailers emptied.  The atmosphere was merry as we took off towards the first park.  We hit three parks, then took a trip to the Salvation Army’s Hospitality house to drop off the rest for their residents and temporary boarders. 

TriSports.com crew on their way to hand out lunches

There is nothing more satisfying than the look on someone’s face when you hand them that lunch.  One gentleman kept telling us “You guys make our day!”  It was a beautiful, cool day and a great way to start out our weekend!  Thanks to all of those who participated!

Handing out lunch and chatting with some folks

IMAZ – Aid Station…arrrrrrr.

Last weekend was a busy one for us, as Nik mentioned in his last blog.  I am the organizer for the Tucson aid station at Ironman Arizona, and I am always so thrilled with the awesome set of volunteers that we get.  The majority of them come from TriSports.com, the Tucson Tri Girls and the Tucson Triathlon Club.  The rest are usually friends and family of sponsored athletes who are racing, or people that are associated in some way with the various clubs and teams that we sponsor around the country.  It is a long day out there, but we have a ton of fun and are right in the thick of the race.  We had a pirate theme this year and the volunteers came to work decked out in pirate-wear. 

Aid Station Pirates....Arrrrr you thirsty?

We had an awesome pirate ship constructed out of cardboard by our great warehouse staff and then painted race morning by our volunteers.  We have, in our opinion, the best location for an aid station – under the intersection of two bridges, so we are protected from the unforgiving sun, rain or whatever nature decides to throw at the athletes on this November day.  Luckily the weather was great, a tad bit warm probably for folks coming from colder climates, but otherwise a beautiful day.  Watching the volunteers interact with the athletes is always so much fun, and seeing the gratitude on the athletes’ faces is what reminds us why we are there.  So a huge thanks to all who gave up their day to make someone else’s better, and good job to everyone who raced on Sunday!

Nik and Andy with the Pirate ship being painted in the background

One particular athlete who stood out was Rudy Garcia-Tolson, who was making his second attempt to become the first double above-knee amputee to complete an Ironman distance event.  In a time of 16:06:27, he achieved his goal.  I am happy to say that our aid station won the Cleanest Aid Station Award and that, together with our Community Funds that WTC offers, a donation of $1050 will be made to the Challenged Athletes Foundation, the same organization that has been instrumental in helping Rudy reach for the stars.

Taking the CAF Challenge

This past weekend was the San Diego Triathlon Challenge, by far my favorite triathlon event of the year. I have been on the starting line at this event with people like Robin Williams, Will Ferrell, and current, former and future triathlon world champs. For instance, I had a little chat with Macca on the way down to the swim about how crappy the heat is in Kona, and chatted with Michellie Jones post-race. The coolest thing is that none of these people are the stars today. They are all there on the same playing field as the rest of us, and all of us are there to help raise money for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. The stars are people like Cody McCasland, Rudy Garcia-Tolson, Sarah Reinertsen and so many other inspirational athletes.
We first learned of CAF when a customer asked us for a donation. Interested in what he told me about the organization, I looked into it further. With an Ironman on my horizon, I decided that the CAF event would be a great first half for me to do. I raised funds on my own, almost $10,000, and Seton and I traveled to and participated in the event (it is not a “race” as no awards are given for time, only for money raised). We were hooked! You can’t watch someone take off their arms and legs to go swim and not be moved. I can’t even describe the feelings I got that day watching these incredible athletes overcome their challenges to compete on this very difficult course (luckily I only had to do the swim this time, and I loved my TriSports.com Rental Wetsuit – so flexible and comfie!). CAF uses the money raised for various programs to give grants to athletes in order for them to pay entry and travel to competitions, for education and mentoring, to help them buy necessary equipment that insurance won’t cover, and lots of other things that most of us never think about as we prepare to race.

TriSports.com CAF Relays

In 2004, we began our non-profit, TriSports Racing, which produces the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival. A large chunk of the proceeds from this weekend of events goes to CAF, and we encourage our staff to fundraise and attend the event so they can see firsthand where this money goes and why we have adopted CAF as our charity of choice.
There is no way to really explain everything this event represents, so I recommend getting out there and doing it yourself. We have participated 4 of the last 6 years, missing only the year I was very pregnant and the year it was cancelled due to fires, and I anticipate being there every year I possibly can. There is no greater gift than knowing you helped give someone else the freedom of independence and hope.