Virginia Races This Weekend

This weekend brings two races to Virginia: the Urban Assault Mountain Bike Race in Richmond and the Historic Marine Corp Half Marathon in Fredericksburg.

One serious Air Dog.

Urban Assault, an 8 or 15 mile loop race, is part of the two day Dominion Riverrock outdoor festival. The first day kicks off at Brown's Island with a 5K mud run, acrobatic kayak and freestyle bike competitions, and performances by Big Gigantic and Perpetual Groove.

Urban Assault will begin at 2:30 pm Saturday. Other activities Saturday include a 10K trail run, kayaking, Stand Up Paddleboarding, bouldering competition, Ultimate Air Dogs, and a performance by Yonder Mountain String Band.

"This is not your normal mountain bike course," warns Singletracks.com. "Leave the beach comber bike in the garage for this one, mountain bikes only."

"Choose between an 8 mile or 15 mile loop of the famous James River Park trails, which are considered one of the most technically challenging urban trail systems. The mountain bike course includes steep up hill and down hill single track trails, stairs over railroad tracks, tunnels, bridges, creek crossings and lots of natural obstacles," says Singletracks.com.

Drew Carey will be leading the way on May 15, 2011 at 7:00 a.m. when Fredericksburg's town crier signals the start of the Historic Marine Corp Half Marathon.

Shots and lemonade are given to racers on the 1700th block of Franklin Street. I wonder how many laps around that block I'm going to need to make for it to be a half marathon.