TOPICS & TIMES:
- The story behind Real Athlete Diets (RAD) (2:00)
- The pressure of fueling performance (6:10)
- Growing the company (10:32)
- Runners’ relationships to food (18:55)
- Kelly’s background in running & cooking (20:41)
- Training with Jason Koop (40:25)
- Gourmet vs. utilitarian cooking? (44:33)
- Thoughts on nutrition & dieting (48:04)
- Favorite event to work with? (57:43)
- Reducing catering’s environmental impact (1:01:18)
By the time she was 5 years old, Kelly Newlon had already identified two of her biggest passions: running and cooking. Those passions led her to running longer and longer races and becoming a classically trained chef.
And these days, Kelly and her husband Morgan operate RAD (“Real Athlete Diets”) out of Boulder, Colorado, where they are — quite literally — feeding and fueling the ultrarunning community, including a high number of its elite performers.
So in this episode, Maddie Hart and I talk to Kelly about eating well and performing well; the entrepreneurial story of how she went from training at the Culinary Institute of America, to working on a food truck, to starting Real Athletes Diets; dealing with the huge range of the dietary restrictions of runners; and more. This is a fun conversation and a really interesting window into the world of an important member of the running community, and Maddie and I are happy to share it with you.
