Description

Last weekend at the Trek/K-Swiss team triathlon camp, Chris Lieto talked about his time trial challenge with Lance Armstrong. After seeing Lieto training in Kona, Armstrong tweeted out to his 2.4 million followers that they should have a time trial on the Queen K. Lieto commented on the initial tweet from Armstrong: “If someone twitter’s something like that to almost three million people, you don’t really have the option of saying no.”

Transcript

Chris Lieto on Armstrong's Twitter Time Trial Challenge Chris Lieto: So the last two weeks, I’ve been in Hawaii training. I’ve brought my family over and I was doing a training block and some family vacation time and Lance Armstrong is out there training as well in Kona and we’d see him and we’d ride a little bit with him when I was out there training. The night before the last day, I’m leaving so I was in it on Tuesday night. I passed him on the road and we waved and stuff like that and then about an hour later, someone calls me and says, oh you got twittered by Lance and so I looked in the Twitter it was a challenge from Lance Armstrong to a TT challenge on the Queen K, if I was up for it. If someone Twitters’ something like that to almost three million people, I don’t think you have the option of saying, no. Yes, so it turned out to be something fun. He, as far as we talked beforehand and we’re just going to meet up in the morning on the Queen K right at the Hilton; white Koloa and we were going to race from there to pass the scenic lookout to the four seasons and Kokea Road which is I don’t know, maybe 11 miles or something like that. So we made sure that he was not going to wear an Arrow Helmet and I showed up without my Arrow Helmet but he showed up with his speed suit, skin suit on. I don’t know but it’s all unfair. But I guess technically I had race wheels on and he didn’t. I had 18 spoke front wheel and maybe a 24 spoke rear and he had 30 spokes on his wheels but it’s kind of even on that one. Yes, then we TT’d all out, effort he wanted first and I was second and got as far as to watch him and it was a good race. Luckily we had a tail end. He beat me by nine seconds. He won at 18:35 and I went like 18:44 so it was fun, it was a good time. It was good to be that close to somebody I thought it was going to be a little bit, fought it back but 9 seconds. Male: What’s your average speed? Chris Lieto: Average speed was about 35 miles an hour with a good little hill in there too, there’s a good climb in there.