The person I admire

Right now I am a huge fan of my lil sister. We were never buddies when we were kids, only after moving at elast 6 hours apart from each other in our twenties did we start to get along. For years now she has come out west to crew for me at 24 hour races. In high school Jodi was a runner, a distance runner. She was tiny, staying under 100 pounds and under 5 feet tall all through high school - all the effects of running. She quit running in college, and grew finally. A few years ago, as she tells it, she came back from crewing at one of the 24 hour races and thought to herself, Jen is doing this crazy endurance thing on her bike, I ought to be doing something. She kept saying out loud to her husband that she never did run a marathon like she always wanted to, and she ought to get back into running. He finally told her to shut up and just register for the Chicago marathon (her home), and so she did.
So, this past weekend I travelled to Chicago to cheer her on in her third time running the Chicago. I knew what to expect, but I did not expect what I experienced. I cannot think of any other non-arena, non-team sport that would draw that many participants at one time! Almost 40,000 people registered and participated, and the number of people in the streets supporting was triple that - or more!
My bro-in-law and I took the bikes and essentially followed my sister the entire race. We stopped to watch her run by 7 times or more, and got to ride along-side her (not right along side her, but within about 15 feet of her) for 2.5 of the last 3 or 3.5 miles of the marathon. At that point people were dropping out like crazy, mostly because Chicago was unseasonably warm again (last year they called the marathon several hours into it, cutting most people off from finishing, having one death and innumerable prsons off to the hospital from heat exhaustion). We cheered for her, encouraged her, and watched our garmin's to monitor her pace. She ran 55 minutes faster than her previous best, but missed her goal by 7 minutes. All in all she was very happy, having made the choice to back off to try to avoid heat exhaustion, she finished strong and only a little sick.
When cycling, if you are feeling pretty bad, you have places you can maybe coast down a hill, or in the flats you can pedal, coast, pedal - but in running if you are not running you are walking and if you are not doing either of those there is NO forward progress. I'll take a 24 hour bike race over a 4.5 hour run anyday. Kudos lil sister, you rock!!