Training Log Archive: jtorranc

Run to work through Rock Creek Park on softening snow - untrampled crust would support me but often gave under the ball of my foot when pushing off. In daylight and expecting less slick conditions, I was less chary of hills and did the usual beginning on the Valley Trail plus some of the larger climbs in the more northerly bit of the map where we tended to hold O races back when we were allowed to.

Some notes - the swelling is subsiding and the pain receptors presumably migrating elsewhere, leaving my left index toenail still attached. Also, I do seem to be able to fall asleep with my night splints on, though I tend to find them annoying if and when I wake in the middle of the night or early in the morning and remove them then. No magical improvements in how the feet feel yet but that was hardly to be expected - a gradual return to their feeling normal is the limit of my expectations.

Took a few minutes and used an emissions calculator to work out that my air travel from 2003 to the present caused the emission of approximately 24 tonnes of CO2. Spent a few more browsing from http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/carbon_offset_wind... to see what my options for offsetting are. I'm not terribly enthused about any of the schemes based on retiring pollution credits or whatever from emissions trading schemes - emissions trading between companies seems perfectly defensible but me paying a company to save energy strikes me as less obviously a good thing, partly because it ought to have benefits in and of itself so why should I pay them to do it and partly because it strikes me as potentially undermining an emissions trading scheme for me to reduce the supply of credits tradeable between companies by buying some of them myself. Taking the argument to absurd lengths, if too many people did it and bought up the whole supply, where would unavoidably polluting industries buy their credits? Of course, this ought to raise the price of credits and thereby encourage more supply. And raise the incentive for companies to lower their own emissions rather than buy credits. Although I find that a bit dubious as long as we're talking about voluntary trading schemes. In any case, I'm not so enthused about subsidising a company to reduce it's emissions - would much rather see a mandatory cap and trade scheme, absent the even better solution of a carbon tax . In any case, of the projects I looked at, the Solar Electric Light Fund (rural electrification projects in the developing world to substitute for kerosene and diesel) seemed the most appealing theoretically. I wonder whether I should be disturbed at the lack of independent certification but it seems likely it may simply not exist for this sort of project.

Comments are invited - shouldn't annoy anyone here outside the discussion forum proper.

C • from the info in the link, it ... 2

Back on the bike, heading to the library near my house after work for the monthly Friends of the Library meeting. Forgot to put on my neoprene booties so it was fortunate the rain held off until after the meeting when I only had a block and a half to go.