Eat 2 Run Ambassador Kinsey Gomez gives us an inside look into how she fuels her high performance running:

A typical day for me involves three main components: training, nutrition, and school. I manage to intertwine these three parts of my life into a braid, weaving in and out of each throughout the day.

I generally wake up at 7:30 am to get ready for my class that starts at 9 am. Every morning, I make my French press black coffee, pack my lunch, and blend up a scrumptious breakfast smoothie.

Today’s breakdown of said breakfast smoothie- in my magic bullet I simply blend frozen berries, kale, spinach, coconut water, 3 TBS hemp seeds, cacao powder, and ground flax seeds. Once the texture is smooth and creamy, I garnish with walnuts, coconut flakes and cacao nibs. Literally the perfect and energizing start to a day!

After breakfast and getting ready for school is done, I bike to campus to start the academic portion of my day. To commence my day, I have my Development of Social Theory class.

After class, it’s time for my favorite part of the day, the RUN! Since I am still working back from my injury late fall, my mileage is pretty low. To counteract this, I make sure to get the number of minutes I would get in running, with some other type of cross training like the bike, pool or elliptical. Today I had a simple 35 min easy run at about 7:20 min pace per mile (4:30 min pace per km), and I loved every minute of it!

After the run, I snacked on an apple with Sunbutter (made from sunflower seeds) to refuel and prepare for my strengthening exercises. I spend one to two hours a day working on these, and I have found that consistency in strength and flexibility are invaluable to recovery and running performance.

Once the strengthening exercises are finished, I hustle off to my Social Psychology class. This class always coincides with lunch time, so I tend to find myself multitasking between note taking and lunch-eating quite a bit in there. On the lunch menu for today, are a little creation I like to call turkey roll ups. To create this tasty dish, I simply lay a slice of turkey down, put my favorite turmeric mustard, sea salt, cayenne pepper, sliced avocado, fresh sprouts, and greens on it, and then roll it up! It is almost like an inside out lettuce wrap, works for any type of meat and inside veggies, and taste amazing! With my turkey roll ups, I had some salted pistachios (these are always a great way to get some of that salt back into your system post workout), Mary’s Gone Jalapeno Crackers with some goat cheese, and carrots with spicy hummus. After this meal, I was recharged and ready to learn!

Once my second class was finished, I headed back to the gym for an hour elliptical workout. I was fortunate enough to have a teammate join me, which made the workout more enjoyable, and it flew by!

After the elliptical workout, I knew I needed to get some quality protein and carbohydrates in to properly recover. To do so, I had packed my favorite trail mix made of sprouted almonds with sea salt, gogi berries, pumpkin seeds, cashews, and tart cherries.

Now that the workout and class portions of my day were done, I biked back home to do homework and make dinner.

After taking an online test, answering some emails, and studying for an upcoming exam, I began brainstorming dinner ideas. Since I wanted something savory with a Mexican flare, I opted for my ‘Tempeh with a Twist’ dish. This creation is full of flavor and has tons of spices that add additional nutritional benefits. To make this dish, I sauté tempeh in a pan with a bit of olive oil, cumin, sea salt, garlic, cayenne pepper, onion, and chili powder. In addition to the tempeh, I had steamed kale, swiss chard, and sweet potato squares. It was so tasty!

I love ending the evening with a grapefruit after dinner. For me, it completely satisfies my sweet tooth and has become a nightly tradition.

Everything I do in a day has purpose. Each exercise is a chance to better my sport and every nutrient I intake is a chance to nourish my body. For this reason, I am always conscious of the quality of food I ingest. I love eating all organic, local when possible, nutrient dense foods to help my body perform to the best of its abilities each day!

With a nourished body comes fast feet… Best,

Kinsey Gomez