R. Scott Studham kept the University of Minnesota’s IT network up and running for more than three years. Now, the school’s 41-year-old chief information officer says it’s time he was up and running, too.

Mr. Studham stepped down as vice president and CIO on Friday, in part to train for an upcoming Ironman triathlon in Louisville, Ky., he says.

After that, he and his wife plan to launch an education-technology startup, he said.

R. Scott Studham left the University of Minnesota, in part to train for a triathlon. University of Minnesota

Bernard Gulachek, the school’s associate vice president for information technology, will serve as interim CIO, a university spokesman confirmed by email.

Reached by CIO Journal Tuesday after a 30-mile bike ride – the previous day saw a 110-mile ride, a three-mile run and a two-mile swim, he says – Mr. Studham says several years at a desk behind a computer screen as an IT executive left him “overweight and in really bad shape.”

The triathlon, set for October, is aimed at forcing him to adopt a healthier, more active lifestyle, including a “full-time commitment” of 20 to 30 hours a week in training sessions, he says.

Mr. Studham was hired by the school to oversee IT in February 2012 from the University of Tennessee, where he had been CIO since April 2009. He had previously worked in senior technology positions at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and IBM Corp.

At the University of Minnesota, Mr. Studham led an $82-million effort to upgrade the school’s human capital management, financial and campus systems to PeopleSoft. He also strengthened cybersecurity by implementing IT security policies and standards, a risk management program and a university-wide security awareness campaign, among other projects.

“Big public universities are a highly distributed environment,” Mr. Studham says, “We worked on alignment to set standards for help desks and other services across different departments.”

He also worked to boost employee engagement through surveys and feedback on IT issues, he says.

Mr. Studham says he plans to explore ways to use technology to “change the way we do education.”

For now, he says he’s focused on getting in the best possible physical shape by October: “I’ve still got a way to go, but I’m feeling pretty good about this.”