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Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff is a go-to guy for city issues: water quality, parks and annexation, to name a few. But he’s also probably one of the fittest people in the office, physically speaking.

He rides his bike to work several times a week. Co-workers tease him about eating health food. And he has competed in Ironman triathlons each of the last three years.

They’re not for the faint of heart, or the weak of body. Ironman competitions consist of miles and miles of biking, swimming and running. Kiff left Wednesday to travel to Penticton, British Columbia, where he will compete Sunday. He talked recently about how and why he pushes himself to the limits of endurance.

Question: How long have you competed in Ironman competitions?

Answer: This is my fourth one, so four years doing Ironman, probably seven years doing triathlons. It’s a 2.4-mile swim and a 112-mile bike ride and then a marathon, so a 26.2-mile run, and you have to finish in 17 hours. So [you start at] 7 in the morning, and you have to finish by midnight to be declared a finisher.

I’ve done three of them and my best time was 11 hours and 59 minutes. Oddly enough, it was my first time so I seem to be getting a little slower as I get older, but I’m still finishing. This length of a triathlon tends to be kind of like the gold standard in triathlons, so as soon as you do your first maybe short triathlon you start to think about what’s next, what else should I conquer, so that’s probably the attraction of it.

Q: Have you always been into fitness? How did you get started?

A: I probably started about seven years ago. I had watched the Pacific Coast triathlon that’s right here in Corona del Mar, so I thought, “Oh, I should give that a try, but I don’t know how to swim.”

A girl that’s just an hourly employee there at the [Marian Bergeson Aquatic Center] pool would come over and say, “You know, your form’s not so good,” and she would come over and give me tips…. Probably had it not been for that hourly employee at the Bergeson pool, who’s part of our recreation department, I probably wouldn’t have had that confidence to do it.

Q: Why do you compete in Ironman?

A: My family would love to get that question answered too. There’s a love-hate relationship with it. During the race, several times you sit there on your bike, or certainly maybe mile 8 or 18 in the race, and you think, “I am never doing this again. This is torture.” But shortly after you finish you get the euphoria of crossing the finish line. A few days after you finish you think, “I’ve got to do that again.”

Q: What else do you do to stay healthy?

A: I bike to work almost all year round, except when it’s raining, and mountain bike around here, and do Ashtanga yoga. I try [to bike to work] at least three days a week. It’s 24 miles round-trip.

Whenever we have any management team get-together they won’t let me bring food because they know they won’t eat it. I’m notorious for soy burgers. I don’t eat red meat generally.

Q: Do you ever just collapse on the couch and channel surf instead of exercising?

A: Not really. I guess my biggest weakness is chocolate, so brownies, cookies, anything chocolate I will eat with the best of them. I usually keep some type of activity up six days a week. It’s hard for me to rest sometimes.