They meet every weekday morning at 6:15 at a street corner in Chicago. Snow, rain, sleet, ice, blustery wind or extreme heat ... it doesn't matter. A quick greeting is followed by an 8.5-mile run downtown to work.
One is carrying her second baby. The other carries the hopes of a history-making performance at the Rio Olympics in August.
Heather Prekop, a former competitive marathoner due in mid-June, sometimes wonders: Do the people jogging alongside her friend Chirine Njeim realize they're getting passed by an Olympian?
Safe to say most do not. Njeim, 31, has made three Olympic ski teams for her native Lebanon but has not exactly reeled in the magazine covers or endorsements.
Njeim ("n-JAME"; the n is pronounced subtly) is genuinely excited she will receive three free pairs of running shoes this spring as a member of the Fleet Feet Sports racing team.
"She's humble," Prekop said, "so I will brag for her. When she sees that she is good at something, she takes it all the way."
Indeed, Njeim began skiing at age 3 near the family home in Beirut.
"I had no fear," she said. "Head down, try to go as fast as possible."
She trained in France and then moved to Salt Lake City, studying and competing at the Rowmark Ski Academy and University of Utah. She made her first Olympic team at 16, carrying the flag at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City as one of two Lebanese athletes.
She completed the slalom (finishing 36th) and giant slalom (45th) despite having overcome ACL surgery, a bout with anorexia that reduced her 5-foot-1 frame to 86 pounds and the extreme nerves that accompany the presence of a mechanical arm-camera at the starting gate.
"I could not focus," she recalled. "Still, it was the best experience."
She experienced the Olympics twice more, racing in Torino in 2006 and Vancouver in 2010 with a top finish of 34th in the downhill.
Her life took a turn in 2009 thanks to the whims of air travel. She was returning to school, a trip that required flying from Beirut to Dubai to Atlanta to Salt Lake City, when a Delta rep in Dubai told her there were no available seats.
A handsome Lebanese-American man named Ronny Kamal consoled her as he also hoped for a standby seat. His name was called and then she joined him in first class, seats 3C and 3D, for the 16-hour trip.
"It was the best first date -- dinner, drinks, a movie," he recalled. "We woke up next to each other and it wasn't awkward."
Njeim and Kamal, a Toledo, Ohio, native who earned an MBA from Ohio State and works in management consulting, married in 2012.
By then Njeim had begun jogging nearly every day, often starting at 5:30 a.m., to stay in shape and explore Chicago's neighborhoods.
She made friends in the running community, offering a wave and a smile beyond the three languages she speaks: English, French and Levantine Arabic. "Sometimes in the same sentence," she joked.
They entered the 2012 Chicago Marathon, and Njeim ran it in 3 hours, 7 minutes, finishing 120th among women.
"That's ridiculous for someone who just picked it up," Kamal marveled.
Turns out that all the biking she did in the hills of Lebanon to strengthen her quads for ski racing also boosted her cardio. Njeim improved to 3:05.4 in the 2013 Chicago Marathon and 3:03.53 the following fall.
Inspired by friends who exclaimed, "Break the 3!" she boosted her training, following tempo (endurance) and speed workouts designed by Prekop, her current running partner.
Prekop, who fell about two minutes shy of making the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials with a time of 2:48.1, would work out Njeim at a track.
"When she is training," Prekop said, "she is a machine."
Njeim's breakthrough came in October at the Chicago Marathon with a blistering 2:46.41, 29th among women and 312th overall.
Her next goal was to run a sub-2:45 to virtually lock up a spot on the Lebanese Olympic team. (They will not be officially awarded until July.)
A month after Chicago, Njeim ran the Beirut Marathon and then faced a decision: try to break 2:45 in Houston in January or in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in April.
Prekop told her it was "the worst idea" to compete in three marathons in four months, but Njeim was impatient _ and bull-headed. She did not want to have to train in Chicago in frigid February.
"I put my foot down hard," Prekop said. "I said, 'Chirine, you need the time off.' "
Between the Beirut and Houston races, Njeim's training days would conclude with an ice-cold bath. Kamal would ask as they lounged in their living room, "Can I ever sit on the couch and not massage your legs?"
Njeim said she was "exhausted" heading into Houston, but she loved the course _ wide open with uncovered highways that yielded highly accurate split times via her Garmin watch.
She had four miles to go when an American named Amy Robillard, wearing shorts with an Ohio State logo, approached and said: "My watch died. I need help to finish. C'mon, let's do this!"
Njeim crossed at 2:44.14, easily beating her goal. Of course "easy" is a relative term.
"When I crossed that finish, I wanted to collapse," she said. "I was like, 'Take my watch, take my shoes, I'm done.' And then all I could think was: I don't have to train in February. If it's cold, I don't have to run!"
She continues to train, of course, in hopes of running a sub-2:40 Olympic marathon. (Ethiopia's Tiki Gelana won gold at the 2012 London Games in 2:23.07.)
By competing, she will join an exclusive club.
Olympic historian Bill Mallon said only 132 athletes (105 men, 27 women) have participated in the Winter and Summer Games. Seven have competed in cross-country skiing and a track-and-field event _ but none has doubled in alpine skiing, which emphasizes power rather than cardio, and track and field. (American Lolo Jones competed as a sprinter and brakewoman in bobsled.)
Njeim remains a face in the crowd in Chicago, but she has gained visibility in Lebanon. She drew fans and some critics, mainly older politicians, when she and fellow Lebanese skier Jackie Chamoun posed topless for a calendar that was released in 2014.
"Lebanon is so conservative," Njeim said. "I'm not embarrassed by it. It's my body and I'm proud."
She joked, "I guess I have to get really famous because then it will be OK," and recalled asking Kamal if they could hang the calendar in their apartment. He declined, recoiling a bit at friends who commented on his wife's appearance.
Njeim hopes to use her stature to empower women in a region, the Middle East, that can be stifling.
"It's motivating to see how people react," she said. "You run fast, good things happen. The faster you run, the more things happen."
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