03/18/2014
March 22, 2014 may very well be the end of a long and glorious history of road racing on the Peninsula, as it likely will be the final year of the Yorktown Victory Run 8 Mile Road Race, and the end of an era. Actually, the end of two eras, as the race started in 1976 as a Peninsula Track Club race to celebrate the American Bicentennial, and was held annually for 15 years until 1990. After a 14-year gap, it resumed in 2005, organized by the Colonial Road Runners, with a current 10-year run, until 2014.
The National Park Service has gradually been moving road races to the York High School and Surrender Field starting location, including the July 4th Yorktown Freedom Run 5K, which became the Yorktown Independence Day 8K, and the old Waterman’s Museum 10 Miler, which became the Yorktown Battlefield 10 Mile Run, organized by the York Lions Club. The Yorktown Victory Run 8 Miler continued its tradition of starting at Newport News Park, and using a scenic course through the Swamp Bridge trail, the Newport News Park Bikeway, then the Yorktown Battlefield tour roads, before finishing up Surrender Road and Rt. 238 before a finish line in view of the Yorktown Victory Monument.
The race was started in 1976 by Bob Hickey, and was initially a 7.6-mile event, to celebrate the 1976 bicentennial of the American Revolution, starting at the Campgrounds section of NN Park, and using the Bikeway to connect to the Battlefield tour roads. Because of limited parking at the Campgrounds, it moved across the reservoir to the Constitution Avenue section of the park and became an 8 mile race for the rest of its history.
The race is a complicated one, with a point-to-point course necessitating bus transportation back to the start, and also needing approval from three jurisdictions—Newport News (Parks and Recreation), the National Park Service (tour roads) and York County (the final public roads), and that’s why the PTC decided to end its run in 1990. Fortunately for the CRR, the race has been organized since its second CRR year by the William and Mary Mason School of Business as a second-year-class MBA project, and our future business leaders have proven their worth by seamlessly handling all the complicated logistics.
This year, the National Park Service wanted to move the race to the York High School start and finish, but the CRR convinced them to have one more year on the traditional course, since it is the Yorktown Victory Run, and it makes sense to have it finish near the Yorktown Victory Monument. Also there are already two excellent 10-mile races using the Yorktown Battlefield tour roads course, the early November edition and the late January edition (that for two straight years had been postponed a couple months, due to icy conditions).
So if you want to participate in the end of an era, check out the entry form in this issue of the PTC newsletter, and celebrate 25 total years of a very special race, the Yorktown Victory Run 8 Miler.
(Courtesy of the Peninsula Track Club)
