Organizers of the Santa Barbara Veterans Day Marathon and Half Marathon announced this past Wednesday, October 14th, that the 7th Annual Santa Barbara Marathon has been canceled, but the Half Marathon is still good to go.

I didn't like the way they said it "We have made the difficult decision to consolidate our events into the Half Marathon." That sounds like something a corporate PR department would say about a shutting down some company operations. Why not just say "we cancelled the marathon"  but the half marathon is still running? I don't know.

This is unfortunate to hear. It is too bad that they waited until not even a month before the event to cancel it, but that happens. Last year's full marathon garnered only 859 participants, down from 1092 in 2013 and 1375 in 2012. The year I ran it, 2009, there were 1685 finishers.  (Thank you MarathonGuide.com for making these results so easily accessible!)

This is not the first local marathon to call it quits. The Malibu Marathon ditched the full marathon and retained its half marathon in 2014.