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Paso High teacher conquers full Ironman 

Teacher Ironman

Paso Robles resident and high school teacher Kevin LeClair rides in the 112-mile cycling portion of the CapitolaMan Triathlon in September near Santa Cruz.

Kevin LeClair runs his fastest marathon in Ironman

Paso Robles High School teacher Kevin LeClair completed his first full Ironman triathlon this fall during the CapitolaMan Triathlon near Santa Cruz the second week of September.

“It was a lot of work,” he said. “It was about five months to be fully committed to training.”

Teacher Ironman

Kevin LeClair with his support team and family after he completed his first full Ironman in under 12 hours.

The full Ironman is a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run. LeClair finished the race in 11 hours and 45 minutes, including transitions between legs.

“My goal was to finish under 12 hours,” LeClair said, adding that such a race, especially for him, is less about competing with anyone else, but doing it for himself. For him, it was just doing it, and the dedicated training that he had to do.

LeClair trained at least two hours a day, six days a week. He said he effectively had nine workouts a day. He broke it into three workouts for running, three for cycling and three for swimming. He said he’d often run nine miles at a time, do 50- or 100-mile rides and 3,000-meter swims. Some workouts, he said, would be a 3,000-meter swim followed by a nine-mile run.

“There were long stretches that it was seven days a week because I chose to,” LeClair said.

He said that it was a sort of celebration because after 16 years of teaching at — and commuting to — Righetti High School in Santa Maria, he got hired to teach English and AVID at Paso High. Throughout most of his training, however, he lived in Paso Robles with his wife, Stephanie, and children. His daughter is a freshman at Paso Robles High School and his son a fifth grader at Pat Butler.

Teacher Ironman

Kevin LeClair runs part of the marathon with his son.

With his job he needed to find a relatively close race, as well as one that worked with his schedule. This was the first year that CapitolaMan was held and since it was soon after school started, it worked out well. Once the race was completed, LeClair got to experience life without commuting to Santa Maria and without the intense training schedule, which he said was similar time-wise to his commute.

Though he did the race for himself, he wasn’t alone. His entire family, along with his brother who lives in Folsom, was there to cheer him on. His brother, LeClair said, is an accomplished runner.

“I asked if he’d run the 13.1 miles with me,” LeClair said. “He ended up running about 20 miles with me — that was really uplifting for me. Not that we were talking — I was really tired.”

He completed the swim portion in one hour, seven minutes; the cycling portion in six hours, 30 minutes; and the marathon in three hours, 45 minutes.

“I’ve done marathons before on my own and that’s the fastest I’ve ever completed a marathon,” LeClair said.

After the Ironman, for which LeClair got up at 3:30 a.m. to start his nutrition plan, he didn’t go straight to sleep as he thought he would. Instead, he stayed up talking with his friends and family.

Although he doesn’t have any plans in the near future to do another Ironman, LeClair said he likes to do at least one race a year.

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