UrbanUpdate

“We all have dreams that we’re chasing,” says Kerri Walsh Jennings, “and mine just happens to be going to the Olympics and winning gold medals with my partner.”

She’s been living that dream for a while. Walsh Jennings and and her former teammate Misty May-Treanor were volleyball rockstars, clinching, among many other titles, gold medals at the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Olympics. May-Treanor retired back in 2012, shortly after the London Games, and now Walsh Jennings, 37, is heading to Rio with her new partner April Ross hoping to continue the winning streak.

Doubles sports inhabit Venn circles between solo and team sports, where you have all the pressure on individual performance but also the need to be completely in sync with another player. It’s not just a team dynamic: you have to gel really well with your partner in order to be successful. There’s even a honeymoon period, according to Walsh Jennings, where everything is smooth at the start, followed by a rocky phase where the wonkiness needs to be ironed out.

But for her and Ross, the post-honeymoon’s over: “Our mindsets are on the same page, our work ethics are very similar and we want the same things. It never gets weird, and the fun stuff is when we can feel each other’s vibes and without speaking we flow together. I think that’s the ideal for any athlete, and we’re living in that space more and more.”

Walsh Jennings isn’t just going into this year’s Games with a new partner though—a year ago she dislocated her shoulder, twice, and took last fall off for surgery and recovery. This came almost at the same time as Olympic qualifiers and ratcheted up the pressure on both her and Ross. Ultimately, Walsh Jennings says it forced them to work as an even more solid unit than before. “When you have an obstacle you can run away or go through it, and we went together arm in arm and it was a beautiful blessing for us.”

She continues: “I do have to keep reminding myself that it’s okay to be a work in progress. If I have a bad game it crushes me, but you can learn and grow a lot as long as you don’t stay in that place of devastation.”

When it comes to food, Walsh Jennings is a creature of habit, partly because it helps with training and partly because, well, she’s got three kids. Dinner is usually salad (like a turkey taco salad), snacks are protein bars and honey sticks, and the biggest meal of the day is an abnormally thick breakfast smoothie. “I like to chew my smoothies,” she says, “and they’re a good way to get my kids to eat vegetables without them realizing it.”

BreakfastBulletproof coffeeSmoothie with Vanilla Almond Breeze, chocolate protein powder, kale, berries, flax seeds

Training snackProtein bar

LunchAvocado toast on ancient grain bread

SnacksHoney sticks

DinnerSpinach and ground turkey with taco seasoning, tomatoes, avocado, cheese

Luke Darby is a contributor to GQ, covering news, entertainment, and the environment. A Louisiana native, he now resides in Cleveland, and his writing has also appeared in Outside, the Dallas Observer, and Marie Claire.Related Stories for GQOlympicsReal Life Diet