Following startlingly different paths, siblings find their way to the top of the triathlon world…and learn from each other in unexpected ways.
In October 1998, a young man named Matt Lieto weighed close to 250 lbs. He traveled to watch his big brother Chris race in the granddaddy of all triathlons, the Hawaii Ironman. Strong and sleek, Chris dispatched the 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run with the annoying ease of the naturally gifted elite athlete that he is. Rotund and panting, Matt found it tough to run the few yards required to hand over drinks to runners at the table where he volunteered. The two could hardly have been living lives more different.
For Robert Frost, two roads diverged in a wood. He took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference. For Matt Lieto, moved to tears by the combination of seeing what his own flesh and blood had achieved and the cumulative sting of a lifetime of being overweight, those paths diverged on Alii Drive in Kona that fall afternoon. He made a decision there and then to follow the road less traveled. Where that road led him is a transformation story for the ages.
The Lietos grew up in the kind of fiercely competitive environment that three rowdy and physical boys are always going to create. Chris is the middle child, two years younger than elder brother Paul, and blessed from early childhood with the same lean muscularity. Sibling rivalry was intense, and Chris candidly admits to getting in ‘a lot of trouble’ for his ‘torture’ of Matt. ‘Being a middle child’, he recalls, ‘I had to fight for attention. I became an achiever, an accomplisher.’ Traditional psychology teaches us that middle children tend to be more independent, and less eager to please than their siblings…but that they are also frequently expected to help in caring for the little one. Once he got to college, he saw little of his younger brother Matt, and didn’t feel especially close to him.
Arriving in this world six years after Chris, Matt was different. He recalls: ‘I had always been an overweight child. I wasn’t a horribly inactive kid, or an absolute pig, I just made poor choices’. Sometimes called big boned, sometimes described as husky, Matt made it through grade school at what he calls a manageable weight, but concedes that he devoted as much time to Nintendo as he did to sport, fueling the effort with Ding Dongs. The stresses of high school, however, led him into a downward spiral he recalls as the fat to fatter cycle: ‘Being overweight during the high school years of your life can be quite an experience. I was just like everyone else at that time - trying to find their way, find friends and people who would accept you for what you are while at the same time trying to discover who you are for yourself. Well, for me it was Round Boy - and for those even less creative hooligans it was Fat Matt. Sweet, thanks guys, that helps a bunch. I believe I ordered the Double Whopper with Cheese.’
Sport provided no refuge or comfort – instead, Matt found that in food. ‘Kind of ironic’, he notes wryly, ‘that the thing I found comfort in was the root of my problems from the beginning.’ That destructive relationship with food continued into college. It was with no end in sight, and in uncomfortably tight size 38 pants, that he settled himself with some difficulty into an airline seat on the flight to Hawaii for a family vacation to watch big brother Chris race his first Ironman.
Chris was always good at sport. His results speak eloquently of an athlete with enviable natural talent and formidable discipline and resolve. One of the fastest cyclists the triathlon world has ever seen, he is a three-time Ironman champion (Japan 2006, Canada 2005, Wisconsin 2002) and multiple winner of shorter events. Many of his wins and placings are punctuated with bike course records. He is a man who goes to the front on the bike and stays there as long as he can. Chris was the first triathlete K-Swiss sponsored when they set out to re-position their footwear brand, and he has several other enviable sponsorship relationships in place: Trek, Blue Seventy Wetsuits, PowerBar and several others. Ever that achieving middle child, he also launched his own business, Base Performance Nutrition. No one in the family was surprised that Chris was racing the Ironman. No one was surprised that Matt weighed almost 250 lbs, either.
Matt returned from Kona ten years ago with a mission. He put himself on a rigid diet and spent up to five hours a day at, of all places, the skate park. He cut out fatty and processed foods, and while it took tremendous self-discipline and navigation through extensive inner turmoil, he stuck to it, and the pounds melted away. Even then, it remained hard. Unlike Chris, Matt’s physiology seems to be such that any nutritional indiscipline leads quickly to the accumulation of bodyfat. So, the struggle to keep it off would mean a lifetime of diets and discipline – or so he thought. But after Matt shed much of what he calls his fat suit with better diet and some light exercise, something extraordinary happened. He decided to give triathlon a try – and he surprised the hell out of people as soon as he started racing. Turns out, under decades of accumulated flab, he had the heart and lungs of a top athlete. While it would have been more than enough for most people to emerge, phoenix-like, as a triathlete of any caliber from the wreck of a heavily overweight body, you have to grin at the idea of world-class genetics being hidden deep inside those 250 former pounds.
Actually, despite his effervescent personality, Matt bristles at talk of his genetic good fortune: ‘When I was 240 and sweating walking to class, people didn’t say “look at that guy, he has good genes” or “I wish I was as athletically gifted as he is”. Yes, I understand both of these things may be true, but it takes a ton of hard work, and a belief in oneself, to find one’s true potential.’ Some of that potential was realized quickly, and Matt rapidly assembled a triathlon resume that most anyone would be proud of.
Matt’s motivations seem very different from those of his brother. Chris achieves because, well, he’s an achiever. That’s just what he does. Matt, however, truly seeks to inspire others - like you - more than to achieve for his own purposes. One wonders whether that noble purpose might yet just take him somewhere truly special. While many athletes talk that kind of talk (a cynic might say it’s a cultivated image –‘I’m just here to help the ball club any way I can’) Matt walks the walk. His guiding of legally blind athlete Aaron Scheidies to a Physically Challenged win at the 2008 Los Angeles Triathlon and to an overall amateur win and a world record for a physically challenged athlete over the Olympic distance at the 2008 Malibu Triathlon demonstrated that this is a guy who actually gives back.
However, even pro triathletes have to eat. And, it is noteworthy that Chris sees himself as a leader and a guide, paving Matt’s way in the sport and opening doors for him – contacts, sponsors, you name it. Matt is presently sponsored by, among others, K-Swiss, Trek, Blue Seventy, PowerBar – that list sound at all familiar? With a lot of work, a little help from his brother, and an assist from his genes, Round Boy became a pro triathlete.
Matt had achieved something truly astonishing by turning himself from a sedentary, overweight individual into a professional athlete capable of winning races (including the Pacific Crest Half Ironman, which he’s made his own, with two wins and a second in recent years). But over the full Ironman distance that initially inspired him, he was clearly not yet performing to capacity, tending to put in scintillating performances over the bike course but fading on the run. And, he was still carrying a little more bodyfat than was optimal for an elite athlete. Despite achieving a personal transformation to match any ever recorded, Matt is quick to admit that a few years ago, he had hit a plateau, and wasn’t sure of how to raise his game to that required at the cutting edge of the sport.
Enter Matt Dixon, the founder of purplepatch fitness. Born of swimming coach parents and an outstanding swimmer since childhood, this British expatriate became an elite triathlete after coming to the US for his Masters degree in Clinical Physiology. His genetics allowed him to rise quickly in the sport too, winning – by pure coincidence – some of the same events that Chris Lieto won in different years, including Vineman 70.3 and the Malibu Triathlon. To take himself to the front of the Ironman field, he submitted to a training plan from a coach that seemed to demand an ungodly combination of volume and intensity. Such was his desire to succeed, however, that he ignored the little voice inside urging caution, put his head down, and got it done. But as he poured on the work and commitment, the results were the opposite of what he wanted - a series of disappointing outcomes that initially mystified him. He knew he had the physical capacity, and he had bloody sure done the work - what was going on? Turns out, all those instincts sounding a warning were correct: the insane levels of work had effectively driven his body into a catabolic state near collapse. When he was finally diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the prescription was almost as harsh as the overtraining had been: a year of no exercise at all to allow the body to recover its basic health, and acceptance of the reality that his career as a pro triathlete was over.
The darkest of times, however, can produce the deepest reflection. It was during that awful period that Dixon’s focus shifted to helping others: not only to go faster, but to avoid the pitfalls into which he himself had stumbled. Rest, restraint, less - these can be hard concepts to sell to a type A personality with the goal of victory at Kona. While he states it somewhat differently, it is fair to summarize Dixon’s goal as bringing holism to his athletes’ training. He introduces mindfulness: of the body’s finite capacities; of the fact that rest and nutrition are just as vital as training; of the cumulative effect of stress, irrespective of its source; of the need to be realistic about time, family and work. In the end, he makes his athletes realize that they will always race better when both fit and fresh…and how frequently they have, in the past, raced fit but tired. Dixon has found fulfillment in guiding athletes of all skill and experience levels to their optimal performance levels, from professional Ironman contenders to housewives and executives with only a few hours to spare per week on their sport. And after meeting Matt Lieto, Dixon identified three principal areas that needed altering in his approach.
First, nutrition. ‘Education was key’, Dixon reports, ‘With fueling being the critical aspect’. One of Dixon’s most powerful tools is getting his charges to understand the conceptual distinction between nutrition on one hand and fueling (before, during and after workouts) on the other. This is as vital for the social weekend warrior as it is for the professional. Matt’s acceptance of the fueling concept enabled him to improve his performance during workouts, his recovery thereafter, and his relationship with food generally. ‘Dieting’ per se, that awful process that had caused him so much despair, is gone, replaced by a dramatically better relationship with food, a healthier metabolism, and improved training performance. Those remaining few pounds melted away, leaving Matt with a near-ideal body composition. This shone light on a new path for him, and he is blunt in the assessment of his old methods: ‘Diets are crap.’
Second, training. Dixon saw Matt’s regimen as comprising too much volume but not enough specificity. He lopped off a third of the volume and added in more intensity, particularly in key, targeted workouts. Progress was rapid, and Matt began showing up to races fit and fresh – and the results began to show it.
Third, belief. This is an area where Dixon excels, his knowledge, charisma and enthusiasm bleeding over to his athletes. ‘Through education of the ‘whys’ of the approach’, he points out, ‘Matt gained belief in the system and was much more willing (and eager) to rest. He saw training results and realized he is not merely a second tier pro – but rather, has the potential to be top shelf. The belief came through the education and the process.’
The combination of these factors, and some tweaked course management strategy, led promptly to significant breakthroughs. At Ironman Canada last year, a healthy and rested Matt chafed at the conservative output Dixon ordered on the bike. However, the run is where the fat lady (or the formerly fat man) sings, the Ironman distance demanding patience as much as it does courage. Matt, for the first time over the 140.6 distance, utterly smoked the run, coming home in 3.05 feeling as if he had plenty more in the tank. In doing so, he carved an astonishing three quarters of an hour off his previous best to finish in 8.45 for 7th place at this prestigious event.
And so, thus fortified with belief, Matt returned to Hawaii, precisely ten years after that momentous first trip, for a date with destiny. Once again, a decade later, what happened at the finish of one of the world’s toughest events made him cry. However, as he ran down Alii Drive this time, Matt was crying tears of relief, of redemption, of realization that he had taken on the toughest adversary any of us ever face – our lesser selves – and had prevailed. He could finally say it: he had won. The record books report that he did not have a fantastic day by his lofty new standards, finishing in 9.09 for 37th among the male pros. But the record books don’t tell the real story.
What of his big brother? For him, too, the record books reflect a disappointing day. Chris finished at 8.58 for 27th place. While desperately disappointed in this outcome (especially on the back of his powerful race the year before, where he had led for a long time before a 6th place finish), Chris’ response, too, was impressive. ‘I got to have my son witness me cross the line and show him that winning is not everything’. Those are the words of a mature athlete…and his 8.19 performance for second place at Ironman Arizona just six weeks later was one worthy of the three-time champion he is.
There’s no denying that, as of today, Chris is the faster triathlete. But there’s also no denying that since Matt began working with purplepatch fitness, he has transcended his prior performance plateau and carved huge chunks of time out of the differential between them. Could there be significance in Chris’ recent move, after decades of blazing trails for Matt to follow, to the same coach that Matt uses? There is a pleasing symmetry, somehow, in that realignment. Could it be that Chris, too, might go faster on a philosophy of a little less, on a race plan with a slower bike leg? Could it be that his little brother might have a door to open for him? Matt has a long way to go; the gulf between their best performances over the full Ironman distance is still twenty-five minutes wide. But inspiration is a powerful thing. Don’t bet against him.
Important, however, not to read too much into the sibling rivalry. Matt makes no secret of his admiration for Chris, and his gratitude to him as the source of the epiphany that changed his life. Chris feels good that his example prodded Matt into such a positive life change, and he loves that a much younger brother with whom he once had little in common now competes shoulder to shoulder with him. They have become close, perhaps with mutual respect for the parts of the soul each knows the other has left out on those desolate courses.
In September 1924, Kiwanis magazine ran a story penned by its editor. It relayed his encounter with "a spindly and physically weak lad" carrying a baby and "staggering towards a neighboring park". " 'Pretty big load for such a small kid' I said as I met him. 'Why, mister,' he smiled, 'He ain't heavy; he's my brother.' "