My name is Janette and I am not crazy...but I am Loco.  

I've decided to chronicle the last few months leading up to what will more than likely be the longest and most challenging day of my life - November 18, 2012... the date of Ironman Arizona.

Once upon a time...it all started with a dream.  Not a dream like you would think, but more of a recurring nightmare.  In my dream, I was running... but yet I wasn't running.  I was crawling, struggling to take a step, scurrying on my hands and knees, but never running.  It was so incredibly frustrating.  I can't recall how many times I had this same dream, but I can tell you that after January 2007, I never had that dream again.  

Other than running laps in P.E. as a child, which let me tell you, really put a damper on my desire to run because we only ever ran when the class was being disciplined ("go run laps" the teacher would say), I had only really run while playing softball in middle school.  

So technically, my view on running was that I would run for one of two scenarios... 1) to get to a shoe sale or 2) to avoid bodily harm due to an imposing threat, and even then, if I thought I could take on the threat, I'd be fighting and not running.  

I had never really run a day in my adult life until I woke up one day in January 2007 and decided that I was going to run a marathon.  I signed up with the local Team In Training group and sure enough, by June 2007, I had completed my first full marathon. 

I proceeded to complete the ING 1/2 Marathon in January 2008... and then decided that I needed to "learn" how to run and joined the Footworks Fitness 101 program in March of 2008 as a participant.  

The rest, as they say, is "history".  I have since completed several more half marathons (one in January 2012, just 13 weeks after knee surgery),  another full marathon, several sprint and Olympic distance triathlons and two Half Ironman Triathlons (one in March 2012 just three months after knee surgery).  My goal this year is to complete Ironman Arizona on November 18, 2012.  

An Ironman triathlon consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and a full marathon...all in the same day, all to be completed in less than 17 hours.  Suffice it to say, I've come a long way, but I have a long way to go to get to my 140.6 (the total distance completed during the race) and my M-Dot tattoo (a badge of honor for Ironman finishers).

I would love for you to follow along on my crazy journey to IMAZ, the good, the bad, the ugly and yes, the countless hours of training that lay ahead.

Why do I do this?  Because someone once told me I couldn't.

~JT