One Half, Two Half

When talking about multiple half marathons, you can either say "half marathons" or "halfs." I think. Well, you wouldn't say "halves" because that just doesn't sound right. But then again, "halfs" is grammatically incorrect so I generally avoid my references to those races in just one word.

Anyway, there's a point to this. I didn't just wake up and decide to start spewing gibberish on this blog.

When the year started... scratch that... when last week started, I had not intended on running a race until the LA Marathon. But in the span of about five days I decided to run a pair of half marathons.

On Sunday, I'm returning to where it all started for me - Surf City. I'm going to participate in the Surf City Half Marathon. Instead of running the full marathon as I did the last two years, I'm going to run the half. I wasn't going to run it at all but had planned on being out there to help celebrate with my fellow Lopers. But a fellow runner on Sunday told me she had a friend who was looking to sell her bib and 65 bucks later, I'm in. I'll have to run as a female but that's fine. Won't be the first time.

That will be a fun day, and I'm sure I'll dedicate a post to what I hope to accomplish from that race, but it won't be the only race I have coming up. On Feb. 12, the following Sunday, I'm going to run the Palm Springs Half Marathon. I'd actually decided on running this before I jumped at the chance to run Surf City. One of the runners in my pace group is running Surf City full on Sunday - his first marathon (!!!) - and is running the Palm Springs half the following weekend, so I decided to run Palm Springs with him. I wasn't going to gun for a PR or anything in that race, mostly just wanted to run a race and run it with him.

I'm not quite sure yet what my race calendar will look like but this could be the year of the long-distance races. Along with the Run Through Redlands (which I'm planning on running) and the Fontana Days Half Marathon (registered) I could run four half marathons (as opposed to four halfs/halves) by June 2 of this year. Add to that the two marathons I'm running (LA, San Francisco), the other two I am eyeing (OC, Long Beach) and my calendar could get lengthy really quick.

But that's fine. I'm not complaining. On the contrary, I embrace the challenge and the multiple races, even if they don't really have a straightforward way of making them plural.