NATCHEZ &045; It’s a mythical distance: 26.2 miles.

More than any other race, it holds the mystique of running fans everywhere.

Stephanie Daly said she and her friends had always wanted to run a marathon. Earlier this year, they decided to make it a reality, and Sunday they ran in the Chicago Marathon. All five of the group &045; Daly and her husband Edward Daly, Simmons Iles, Amanda Jeansonne and Angela Wagoner &045;

finished the marathon in less than five hours. Wagoner is from Vidalia, the rest live in Natchez.

Of the five runners from the area who went to Chicago, only Iles had competed in a marathon previously.

&uot;At a party early this year (Stephanie Daly) said ‘Let’s do Chicago in October,’&uot; Jeansonne said. &uot;It sounded so far away then I thought, ‘That’ll never get here.&uot;

But some six months later, with hundreds of hours and thousands of miles of training behind them, they ran in the marathon.

&uot;It was a beautiful day and the cool weather was great, particularly because we had been training in the heat all summer,&uot; Jeansonne said.

The group began training in the spring and then went into a specific marathon preparation program 18 weeks before the race, gradually increasing the distance on long runs up to a final preparatory run of 23 miles.

The Chicago Marathon is the largest in the world, with about 40,000 runners and more than a million spectators along the route.

&uot;Every inch of the way there were people watching, bands playing, things going on,&uot; Jeansonne said. &uot;It was pretty amazing.&uot;

The marathon has also had a reputation for fast times, though for most of the Natchez group the main goal was to finish, then worry about getting a good time. In the last five years a world record and two American records have been set in the men’s race.

The women’s race has seen two world records set in the past five years.

A big part of the reason for going to Chicago was the appeal of both the event, the largest in the world, and the city, which Daly and Jeansonne both said they had wanted to visit. The group took advantage of the Windy City’s shopping and some great restaurants during their short stay.

Daly said that she and her husband both fell short of their intended time goals and were forced to take things easier after having trouble early in the race.

&uot;It was a humbling experience,&uot; Daly said. &uot;When you are a runner, even if you do everything right, you might have a bad day. I knew early on I wasn’t going to make my time goal so I just fell back to the secondary goal of finishing the race.&uot;

Daly said she and her husband are looking forward to getting back into the social scene.

&uot;We’ve been getting up at 4 a.m. for training runs before it gets hot. That means we’ve had to go home early on a lot of Saturday nights,&uot; Daly said.

Daly said the group is eager to get going and do another marathon in the future, though probably a different one than Chicago.

&uot;It’s like childbirth, you forget how painful it is so you’re willing to do it again,&uot; Daly said.