The rest of the story.....

Around mile 25 we called Brenda... Michele had her phone with her, and I knew Brenda would be so worried. She was SO HAPPY when she realized that not only were we going to finish but that we were together!!! Just hearing her voice combined with that ice cream bar I was so energized..... anyway you know how it ended.

After we got our gear, I saw I had messages, well one of them was from my cousing Jamie... he didnt' finish, he quit at mile 20, not because they called the race, he would have finished before they called it, but because the heat just caused him to have a sucky race from the beginning so he bagged it at 20.

Next I called Brenda, Michele and I were trying to head to the arranged meeting place, but luckily it turned out that Brenda was close, I told her I could see the big energizer bunny and we met there instead. It turns out that Kim finished 2 minutes before me and Michele... if not for my feel we probably would have passed her, or at least caught up with her. Poor thing she had a pretty miserable second 1/2 too, but she finished!!!! :)

I had some shirts made for us to wear in the race, but when we saw how hot it was going to be we decided to put them in our gear bags and put them on afterwards... they were so cute, too bad no one really got to see them!!

Jamie had long since gone home, so I called him and he had us walk to Lake Shore drive, pretty much the same spot where we had been dropped off that morning Lake Shore and Jackson I think.
Again Jamie was so awesome here we are 3 very sweaty very excited girls... we were jabbering away a mile a minute the whole way home. Traffic was pretty bad what had been a 15 minute trip that morning turned into almost an hour going home.

When we got home after we manuvered our way up the stairs Jen had fresh veggies and Hummus waiting for us... it was perfect!!!!
We had already decided the day before we wanted to have guacamole from the mexican restaurant around the corner from their apt. Adobo's... we had walked by on Saturday and saw it on several tables and oh it looked so good, of course we knew we couldn't have it then... so Sunday afternoon Jamie ordered us a Chicago style pizza and then he and Jen went to the restaurant and brought us back guacamole. We were in HEAVEN!!!
Other than the blisters on the balls of my feet and some shoulder soreness I felt great.. I guess all that training in 90 + % humidity and heat really helped!! It was about a week before the marathon when Brenda and I really started freaking out about the weather... ok maybe longer than that... but everyone said calm down you've been running in the heat all summer you will be fine. What they didnt' understand was that during all those hot 20 mile training runs we would be just dripping in sweat and miserable but the whole time we kept saying just think about how nice it will be when we get to Chicago!!!!! LOL So although yes the heat did bother me, it didn't make me sick so I am very thankful for that.

Orginally Jamie wanted us to go downtown after the race, I cant' remember the name of the place, and it would have been a lot of fun, but honestly we were so beat down that pizza and guac at home was perfect!!! Kim has an Aunt who lives in the suburbs and a cousin in the city so they came and got her to take her out to dinner. Brenda and I showered and then just hung out and rehashed the race. We wanted to go to Starbucks, but were waiting for Kim.. but Jen and Jamie had left to go to the grocery store and we were getting bored so we went to starbucks... I knew she would call when she got home and it really was just right around the corner, ok maybe two corners. Kim did call us after we had been there for about 30 minutes.. Jamie walked her over and then the three of us went to wal-greens to pick out a card for Jamie & Jen. I was also looking for some miracle cure for my blisters but I didn't find anything.

Jamie has some awesome friends!!!!!!!! Brian the guy who was running with him ended up finishing in 3:12... he is an ironman and is used to running in the heat. Two or was it Tube?? anyway super guy, he had been with Jen on the bicycles trying to keep up with Jamie. Mike & Steve also really nice guys. They would ask us questions and listened to all of our ramblings... I guess i'm not used to that, other than my husband and a few others, most of the guys I know can only stand to listen to girls talke for a couple of minutes and then they tune out.

Jamie had borrowed the movie Knocked Up for us...he popped it in and then he went to bed while we watched the movie. I had heard how hilarious this movie was everyone had raved about it... I don't know, maybe if I hadn't kept dozing off I might have thought it was funny too... but I didn't really care for it at all.

It was midnight when we finally went to bed.... 5:00am was really going to come quick.