Lean Green Kona Machine

Chris Lieto has seen improvement in each of his Ironman World Championship performances. This year, the Northern Californian aims to best the field with the same strategy he's used for his previous wins... a lightning fast bike split.

Stage One of the 2008 Tour of Utah left the tiny town of Nephi at 10:00 a.m. on August 13, with 114 riders from around the world grinding through the heat, hills and scrubland of central Utah in search of bicycling glory at one of the new, lavishly-sponsored stage races popping up all across America. After 102 miles, three riders broke from a huge and tightly-bunched peloton to jockey for the win. All of the riders coasted to a halt after the grueling finish; some headed to doping control, the rest repaired to the shade of their RVs to hydrate, visit their soigneurs for revivifying massages and inhale thousands of calories.

All except one.

One athlete, after battling the likes of Tyler Hamilton and Will Frischkorn for four and a half hours, laced up his running shoes for a breezy little brick. That athlete is Chris Lieto, America’s next best hope for an Ironman World Championship – and as he headed out into the Utah desert, his teammates could only shake their heads in amazement.

Lieto is not only a multiple Ironman winner, he’s been moving up the Kona podium with metronomic precision thanks to a blistering bike talent that some have said equals that of Norman Stadler. Placing 13th in 2005, ninth in 2006 and sixth in 2007, Lieto has his eyes set on nothing less than the top step of the biggest, baddest triathlon in the world.

The rap on Lieto, even as he won an astounding three Ironman races last year (Japan, Canada and Wisconsin), is that his marathon isn’t strong enough to overcome the likes of Craig Alexander or Chris McCormack. Lieto’s run time of three hours last year at Kona wasn’t enough to sustain his 4:28 bike leg, especially when Macca threw down a scorching 2:42 marathon for his first championship. In fact, it wasn’t even enough to hold off veteran Tim DeBoom, America’s last champion (2001, 2002) who overcame a 4:38 bike to post a 2:48 marathon and finished two places ahead of Lieto.

Lieto’s response? Bike harder. “I’m going out there in October with the same strategy,” he says. “I know I’m not the best runner in the sport. I’m not going to outrun Macca or Craig Alexander, but you have to put yourself out there and take risks. If I play it safe, I can get in the top five, maybe even third. But my goal is to win, even if that strategy makes it more challenging and difficult.”

Thus the Tour of Utah. Lieto has, for the last two years, been a member of the California Giant Team, racing against bike pros in races like the Cascade Classic and the Tour of Mount Hood. Professional stage races are certainly not the standard triathlon training staple. The mountain climbs and relentless attacks – even the responsibility of pulling for your team – make it a grueling antithesis to the steady-state Ironman training ride. But Lieto has a plan.

“Bike racing makes me push myself beyond what I can do in training. I push higher watts and learn a whole new level of suffering. You come out of it with a greater fitness and threshold level.”

The team, which also includes Andy Jaques Mayne, has been warmly welcoming to this strange visitor from Tri-land. “I’m with a great group of guys. I’m extremely lucky that they allow me to race with them, because they waive some of their requirements and let me kind of gear my racing around my training. It’s also just a great mental break from training,” Lieto notes. Despite his invitations, none of his teammates has taken him up on his cool-down runs, which he insists help with recovery.

If it sounds like a busy schedule, it is, especially since Lieto and his wife Karis just welcomed a second child to their Danville home: Kayah Grace Lieto was born, providentially, on 8/8/08. With a four-year-old son, Kaiden, already running around, it is to all of the Lietos’ benefit that he isn’t a typically monomaniacal triathlete. A natural goofy-foot who posts videos of his surf sessions on his homepage (www.chrislieto.com), Lieto grew up in the Bay Area and played water polo in high school before moving south to Huntington and Newport to be, as he laughingly calls it, “a surf bum.”

Like so many others, Lieto was inspired by the telecast of the Ironman World Championships and, in 1998, began his triathlon career. Unlike most others, his soaring talent was immediately apparent. His first big triathlon was Vineman, which remains a personal favorite, perhaps because it was only his third competition – and he not only won his age group, he qualified for Kona.

As if that’s not enough, the guy is movie-star handsome, unassuming and funny, and though he now has the lustrous sponsorships and palmares of a top professional triathlete, it wasn’t always easy climbing the ladder of top pros. His foot was crushed in 2000 when a friend accidentally ran him over, necessitating a lengthy recuperation. He struggled to balance a job as a mortgage broker with the increasing demands of professional triathlon, and even considered retiring after the 2005 season. But late that season, he won IM Canada and moved up to just outside the top-10 of Kona, a result that inspired him to keep the grind on.

He keeps the massive training in perspective now that triathlon is his full-time career. “I figure the time I spend training is just like any other person’s job,” he says. “I actually have more family-time flexibility than most. I get to see my kids in the middle of the day, and kind of get home around 6:30 just like everyone else.”

Even as he chases the elusive win in Hawaii, Lieto is finding that his priorities are changing, just a bit. “A big part of it is my family,” he says, “But I love creating things and want something to come out of triathlon rather than just being in it for myself.”

To further that post-race career, he has recently started a nutritional company, BASE Performance Nutrition. “It is intended to take care of your body from the inside out,” he explains. “I take fewer supplements than I ever did in the past, because I’m taking care of the base, the building blocks, of nutrition.”

Either Lieto is a closet science geek, or he’s done a ton of homework in developing BASE’s products, which include a “structured water” and an amino acid supplement. BASE’s Web site explains that Base Water is a “proton donor” in the energy mechanisms of the mitochondria.

Lieto’s other out-of-competition avocation is easier to understand: late last year he created The Green Athlete, an initiative that uses his considerable reputation and voice to encourage other athletes – professional and recreational – to lead greener lives.

“I don’t want to be THE green athlete,” he asserts, “I just want to make a change and make an impact that’s greater than just me competing. We want to just promote how easy it is to be environmentally friendly, how just getting involved and making small changes affects your thought process.”

That’s not an uncommon sentiment, but Lieto walks it more than he talks it. He recently bought a Ford van and had it tricked out in Fresno. It now looks like something you’d see in Sturgis: giant wheels, a five-inch lift and a bad-ass black color scheme dominated by gigantic logo decals.

But look harder: it runs on bio-diesel. It has a solar array on the roof that powers a flat-screen and Playstation array (Lieto to Sony: “Thanks!”) When Lieto rolls into races as far away as the Tour of Utah in this rig, it is a thunderous statement of environmental intent. But when he shuts it down, it’s Jack Johnson time – “I just like having a place where I can hang out with other people. We open it up, bust out the beach chairs and make it as welcoming as possible – we even serve coffee. It makes it really easy to travel and spread the word, plus some sponsors, like Trek, K-Swiss and Sungevity, have really helped out.”

The van is only a part of his green initiative. He supports and blogs about bike commuting, ride-sharing to races, buying in bulk, paring consumer packaging and recycling. He’s not a scold, he just lives the life to set a good example. To avoid buying bottled water, he installed a water filter in the van. To cut down in-race garbage, he only uses gel flasks. He even advocates utilizing leftover on-course fruit rinds as compost.

As for carrying the hopes of American triathlete fans, Lieto doesn’t sound fazed, he just sounds surprised. “I haven’t really thought about other peoples’ expectations,” he laughs. “I have my own pressures and expectations. I want to do well for myself, and for my sponsors. If Americans are behind me, that helps carry me through the tough times on the course. It’s pretty fun to be out there and feel that.”

He should be feeling a lot of love as he lines up off Alii Drive. What’s even better, Chris Lieto is one athlete who is highly deserving of it.