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 involved,” LeBlanc said. “It’s become more of a fun thing to do and it’s keeping everyone young and in shape.”

A self-described morning person, LeBlanc also likes to weight train before work two days a week, swims several times a week and uses the treadmills and cycles at the health club during the winter months when running outside is no longer an option.

“I’ve always been healthy. I’ve always played sports of some kind,” she said. “I try to improve my times every year.”

Having fallen in love with the event, LeBlanc competes in triathlons regularly, has plans to run one in San Fransisco with her daughter and aspirations of completing a race in Los Angeles or in Colorado. She has even gone as far as Orlando, Fla., to run a triathlon, though in hindsight she doesn’t think she’ll run the event again.

“It was kind of scary,” she said. “You swim at Disney World and there are alligators around. They have boats there and people watching for them. That was kind of an experience that I don’t want to do again.”

The one race she returns to year after year is the Danskin Triathlon, an event she describes as “very well organized,” with more than 3,000 women competing every year.

Athletes raise $95 each to participate, with much of the funding going toward breast cancer research.

“I’ve done a few others and I think the Danskin one is very well organized,” she said. “You hear people’s stories. You think you’re bad off until you hear these other people who have been fighting cancer two or three times and they are quite an inspiration.”

In the middle of a move from her home in Windham to a new house in Salem, LeBlanc was confident that beating last year’s time across the finish line was out of the question.

With less focus on her training and more toward moving into her new home, LeBlanc just looked forward to completing the Sunday, July 27, race.

Despite a late start due to inclement weather and another delay after the medical personnel standing by left the race to respond to a bad accident, Le- Blanc ran, biked and swam faster than she did last year.

“We all did great. One of our neighbors came in fifth in her age group. I bettered my time. How I did that, I don’t know,” she said. “We’ve all vowed to do it again. Hopefully we can do it again. It was a fun weekend to get away from everything.”