EDITOR’S NOTE: The News-Sun has profiled area triathletes in the weeks leading up to the Great Buckeye Challenge at Buck Creek State Park today, Aug. 22.

SPRINGFIELD — Lisa DeLong calls it a crazy story.

In less than two years, she turned herself into an Ironman triathlete, swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 and running 26.2 in Panama City, Fla., last November. She celebrated the accomplishment by getting a tattoo of the Ironman logo on her ankle, something she’ll be able to show off at the Great Buckeye Challenge today, Aug. 22, at Buck Creek State Park.

All this happened in the last three years, while DeLong, 45, was raising three children, ages 8, 11 and 14, as a single mother and running a medical practice. Prior to that, she had done no training at all.

“I was going through probably the worst time of my life about three years ago, going through a divorce,” said DeLong, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Springfield. “It was just a really bad time. I started working out with a personal trainer, trying to get myself out of the mire I was in.”

At her 25th high school reunion in the summer of 2007, she met a Toledo Whitmer classmate who was about to run his first Ironman.

“You’re crazy,” she told him. “I can’t even run.”

He told DeLong anybody can run, and at his urging, she started on Aug. 1, 2007. In September, she ran her first 5K. In November, she bought a bike. In January of 2008, she joined a masters swimming program in Dayton. In April of that year, she completed her first sprint triathlon at Miami University. In June, she did a half Ironman in Boise, Idaho.

“I just got hooked,” DeLong said. “I did the half, so I said I guess it’s time I start looking at doing a full.”

In the fall of 2008, she signed up for the 2009 Ironman Florida and started ramping up the training for a race that would take her 15 hours, 3 minutes, 2 seconds to finish. The winner finished in 8½ hours while the slowest finished in just under 17 hours.

“I thought I would get to the point where I would say, ‘Why did I do this?’” DeLong said. “But I never did. It was just an amazing day. There aren’t too many things in life I could compare it to.”