BY DERRICK PERKINS Diagnosed with breast cancer 11 years ago – just three years after her sister died from the same disease – Janet Leblanc celebrated her recovery by competing in a triathlon. “Always being active and then coming down with cancer – it was a year of hell dealing with it and not knowing whether it was going to go good or bad – I just wanted to achieve something,” LeBlanc said. Now, more than a decade after surviving a form of cancer that has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 women in 2008 alone, Leblanc has just crossed the finish line of her eighth Danskin triathlon in Webster, Mass. She ran her first triathlon two years after her brush with cancer with the encouragement of friends she made at the Salem Health Club. Not knowing how to swim, LeBlanc began practicing in the club’s pool and learned the breast stroke in time to participate in and finish the event. “I was so excited that I ran up to the closest person and grabbed them, and I was crying because I was just so happy I had finished,” she said. “I finished. I did one. I was so excited the next year I did it again, another triathlon.” Since then she has run in a number of different triathlons across the country and even formed a small group of friends that train together locally. The Tri-Pods, as the group calls themselves, arrange times to swim together at Cobbetts Pond, or bike and run during nicer weather. “It’s a lot of different people that are invol ...
Anytime
