Ever wanted to run up the stairs of the Wells Fargo Tower in Downtown Roanoke? Or through a parking garage?

 

Now's your chance. Enter the WazUpWidis race today. 

 

The first-year event is the brainchild of Roanoke Parks and Recreation and Mountain Junkies. The race, which is about 2.5 miles long, is being called "Roanoke's Most Breathtaking Event." The race will feature outdoor and indoor runs and plenty of challenging climbs, including more than 600 stairs.

 

The challenge of this race is to run and climb all while passing by downtown Roanoke landmarks. Can you do both?

 

The course will route runners through the pedestrian crossing at Wells Fargo Tower, to the Virginia Museum of Transportation, across Salem Avenue and through the Campbell Parking Garage, by Warehouse Row, through the Gainsboro Parking Garage, down Shenandoah Avenue and back to the Wells Fargo Tower an up to the finish line on the seventh floor. One of the most unique features of the race is special access for runners through the museum train yard, where races will twist up and down three aisles and a series of parked trains.

 

Find out more about the race and how to enter >>> 

Students at the University of Vermont will be without bottled water on campus when they return from winter break this year. The university recently banned on-campus sales of bottled water.

 

Instead, students are being encouraged to fill up reusable cups, mugs, and bottles at refill stations that have been placed all over campus. The stations are becoming a popular campus addition; Virginia Tech also has refill fountains throughout campus.

The effort to reduce waste and encourage sustainability has been gaining traction in communities and on college campuses. And you can join in on the effort at home by refilling instead of buying bottles.

 

See a few reasons why you should switch to tap water >>> 

For many people, thinking about the future conjures images from movies like Blade Runner or Mad Max: a post-apocalyptic dystopia stripped of nature and human kindness. We seem drawn to that flame, but it's a dangerous fixation.

There are many reasons for the attraction - global threats to the environment, economic hard times, decades of disconnection between children and nature - but there's a fundamental problem with it. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that any movement - any culture - will fail if it cannot paint a picture of a world people will want to go to.

Despite undeniable successes, environmentalism is in trouble: Many recent polls describe a public with diminishing regard for environmental concerns. What we need now is a new nature movement, one that includes but goes beyond the good practices of traditional environmentalism and sustainability, and paints a compelling, inspiring portrait of a society better than the one we live in - not just a survivable world, but a nature-rich world in which our children and grandchildren thrive.

This new nature movement, inchoate and self-organizing, is already emerging.

Read more about the movement from Richard Louv >>>