Today is Friday, and I'm at the airport waiting to fly out to Los Angeles for the weekend for my 43rd state half marathon. Yesterday when I woke up, I had a text from my friend Hazel who is meeting and running with me in L.A. She forwarded me a message from the race organizers that they were canceling the race and postponing it until March, citing a problem with the location. WHAT??!!!!! How on earth do you cancel a race a few days before it happens without much of an explanation???!!! I have no idea what the problem is with the location--either they didn't have it hammered out to begin with, or perhaps the current teacher strike/protests are taking over--but at least let us know. The options they gave were to transfer our registration to the future race (or another race within their organization) or transfer our registration to another runner. Um, thanks, but I can't just hop another plane to run in California anytime I want, and I don't know any other runners out there, so WHAT THE HECK!??? Needless to say, I was super annoyed and disappointed.
But I wasn't going to settle for missing the race. Upon my wake-up on Thursday morning hearing this news, I hit up halfmarathons.net to see what other options might be out there. As luck would have it, there was another half marathon about one half hour away in Long Beach. The Winter Fun Half Marathon will do! It was super cheap to register, and they do give out finisher medals, so it will suffice. The route is 3 laps of 4.35 miles, which isn't my favorite way to run, but it looks like it is along the beach, so that should be really nice.
I can't believe, of all trips, that this happened. I feel like I jinxed us because I mentioned to Hazel when I spoke to her earlier in the week that inaugural races sometimes have some organizational snafus. Talk about a snafu! Neither of us wanted to just cancel, with all the plans she and her family have arranged for us. I'm just so glad she was open to jumping into this other race. I usually spend more time researching my options, but in a case like this, plan B had to happen very quickly. I'm just glad there was another option available.
So I'm here at the airport, waiting to start the first leg of my trip. I have a stopover in Charlotte, and then I'm on to LAX. And none too soon...we are set to get up to a foot of snow here in CT this weekend. I'm happy I'll be running on the beach Sunday instead of shoveling snow. Stay tuned for more updates from California this weekend!
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