NORTHRIDGE : Runner Who Trained While Homeless Goes 18 Miles

Fourteen-year-old Jessica Wendrick, who trained for the Los Angeles Marathon even though her family was homeless for much of the past year, was unable to finish the race Sunday.

“It was just too hot for her,” said her mother, Linda Wendrick, speaking from a telephone near the rent-subsidized apartment complex in Northridge where Wendrick and her four daughters recently moved into a one-bedroom unit.

“She made it to Mile 18 and was really hurting,” Wendrick said, “then she got hit with a blast of cold water someone was spraying and it was too much for her.”

Jessica, her mother said, was not feeling well enough to be in school Monday but would return there today.

Now that the family, which lived for several months during the winter in a station wagon, has a place of their own, Wendrick said, Jessica can more regularly go to school and hopefully get on a steady training schedule.