J. Burton LeBlanc IV – Signature

To succeed in a court of law, you have to find, within the tangles of your mind, an interior compass that points you right.

Burton LeBlanc sharpens his senses by going to water, wind and road as a regular triathlon competitor. Last fall, he became an Ironman by swimming, biking and running beside the Gulf of Mexico in Ironman Florida.

When he dove into that cold November chop for the first leg of the 140-mile race, he couldn’t help but see the irony. Here he was, swimming in the very waters that were consuming so much of his mind and heart counseling the state of Louisiana after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. At the finish line, he felt a strength he’d never known before.

“Now that I’ve gotten through Ironman, I feel like there is no challenge I can’t get through mentally, and that translates into my work,” he says. “I can say completing an Ironman gives you a little reservoir of strength.”

Yet when LeBlanc began training for his first tri three years ago, he couldn’t swim across a pool without stopping. He tooled around on his bike, stopping after six miles. As for running, years of playing basketball and tennis taught him how to run quickly for 20 steps, but he wasn’t schooled in the marathon distance an Ironman calls for.

LeBlanc kept at it, and in the process, he learned that by showing up eager to listen to experienced friends and a variety of coaches—especially Will Jones of 4th Dimension Fitness, who taught him how to maximize his busy schedule—he could accomplish what once seemed impossible.

“I smile when I go out and sweat,” he says. “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun.”