COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) – They call it a Triple Deca Ironman – an Ironman-length triathlon a day for 30 days. Even the name is a workout.

Again, just so we’re clear, that’s a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike race, and a 26.2-mile foot race. Each day. For 30 days.

Before September, it had never been attempted – at least not in any kind of organized fashion.

“At the time I heard about it, it was going to be the first and longest event (of its kind) ever,” said Jaime Azuaje, 26, of Colorado Springs. “I knew, even if I didn’t finish it, I wanted to be a part of it somehow.”

On Sept. 8, Azuaje joined 21 other über athletes from around the globe to compete in the world’s first Triple Deca Ironman ultratriathlon in Lonato, Italy. When he crossed the finish line for the final time Oct. 7, Azuaje was among only eight competitors to complete this ultimate of endurance challenges. He also was the youngest.

“It was crazy,” said Azuaje, of the grueling physical demands. “Then we ate some dinner, went to sleep and got up and did it again.”

A born athlete, Azuaje grew up in West Texas, hands to heaven and feet firmly on the gridiron. After high school graduation, he took up cycling to stay fit and fell in love with the sport.

While making plans to visit a friend in Austin, he decided to compete in a bike race.

“I looked around, but I couldn’t find any bike races. I found tons of sprint (short-distance) triathlons, though,” Azuaje said. “I was, like, ‘Sure, I can run a few miles.’”

And like that, he was hooked.

“I loved the lifestyle and people. Everyone had the same goals – to be healthy and feel better,” he said. “I decided to jump straight to an Ironman.”

As a kid, Azuaje imagined himself competing in the Ironman competitions he watched on TV.

“I had the goal in the back of my mind forever, but I was a 10-year-old from West Texas, where there’s no water. I figured the swim would be impossible,” he said.

Azuaje’s friends convinced him to first try a half-Ironman competition. He completed his first before leaving Texas to pursue a degree in biblical studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., where he joined the school’s triathlon team and started running marathons.

After completing the 2008 ChesapeakeMan Ultra Triathlon, an Ironman-style competition, one of his professors – an accomplished long-distance runner who organized extreme trail races – invited him to try an ultramarathon, a foot race longer than 26.2 miles, which is almost the distance from Durango to Mancos.

The following year, Azuaje ran his first 100-mile ultramarathon, then his second. Then he really started to push himself: ultratriathlons double and triple the distance of Ironman competitions.

“They get longer and longer and crazier and crazier. It’s about pushing limits,” said Azuaje, who moved to Colorado Springs with his wife, Heather, in 2012 for a job in youth ministry at Fellowship of the Rockies church.

A friend told him about the first-ever Triple Deca Ironman, planned for fall 2013 in Italy, and Azuaje ran the idea by Heather, also an accomplished athlete. She thought the idea was “cool” and encouraged her husband to seek local sponsors. Colorado Springs Bike Shop, Rampart Roofing and Boulder Running Co. contributed food, supplies and equipment tune-ups as well as money for airfare overseas.

Triple Deca Iron Italy 2013 began just after dawn Sept. 8, with 76 laps in a pool, then 30 laps around a track on a bike, then 54 laps around a park on foot. Azuaje underestimated the beating his body would take during those early days.

“The first seven days, I was in complete body shock,” said Azuaje, who at first managed only four or five hours of sleep at night. After that first week, though, his body began to adjust to the ceaseless exertion and brief recovery window. After Day 10, he started to get faster. By the halfway point, he’d shaved two to three hours from his daily times and had lost about 15 pounds.

By Day 20, his body was in “cruise mode.”

“I will never say it got easy, but, by then, my body had accepted what was being asked of it,” he said.

Based on cumulative times, Azuaje finished seventh and set a world record as the youngest person to complete both a Double Deca and Triple Deca Ironman.

So, when you’re 26 and have bested one of the world’s most grueling physical challenges, what’s next?

Azuaje is thinking off-road Iron triathlon ultramarathon.

“Clearly, I love the trails,” he said.