A blast to be racing on the Fourth of July

With the notable exception of Christmas, it really doesn't seem like a real holiday for me if I'm not racing. I made it a real holiday by heading out to to York County for (likely) my final road race as a Virginian.

In terms of winning hardware, I didn't pick a race very well. Several weekends back in Newport News in the last month, I've nearly gone out for races but decided to stay home and run. In nearly every case, when I saw the times in my age group, I saw that I easily would have won an age-group awards.

With more than 400 runners, that wasn't going to be the case with today's Yorktown Independence Day 8K. Judging from the 2009 results, I would have had to run 6:15 mile splits to have a decent chance at an age-group award. After mile splits around 6:57 for the first two miles, I knew that this wasn't going to happen.

It's always fun to race, and this was no exception. Unlike when I was in the newspaper business, I actually was able to go to bed early enough to get in a good night's sleep!

This course is completely on trails, 95 percent of it pavement, so there's no concern about traffic. Thankfully, there was shade for much of the course.

After the first couple of miles, I kept a fairly even pace. But for the last couple of miles, I never could really pick off other runners and pretty much kept my position. I was hoping to break 35 minutes if I had a good race, but had to settle for 36:20. (An 8K is actually just shy of five miles, not 5.19 miles as my Garmin read.)

I caught up with Michelle Smith-Harden, left, after the race. The Daily Press did a feature on her a few months ago after she finished marathons in all 50 states. She's doing TWO marathons next weekend: The Grandfather Mountain Marathon on Saturday and the Flatlands Marathon on Sunday. Better her than me!

Can't wait to do my first race when I, once again, am a North Carolinian!