<human>: More specifically, my husband and I are signed up for our first 1/2 marathon in mid January (the Mississippi Blues!).  A friend of ours has asked if we are going to run a local half in early November.  We've hesitated to send in the paperwork just yet, because as new runners we weren't sure if that would give us enough time to really recover well.  

Maybe if we treated the local race like a really long training run, and didn't outdo ourselves we'd be better off (that was the plan we came up with at least), but I'd hate to crash out or injure myself before a huge race like the Blues.

Can you succinctly summarize the text in 1-3 sentences?
<bot>: How long should we wait between half marathons as newbies?  Is 2 months long enough if we take it easy?