How Hobbs Kessler Won Two US Titles Fueled by Rice Krispies Treats and Country Time Lemonade

Roughly once a week, Hobbs Kessler does a sweep of the trunk of his car. It’s not because the 21-year-old Kessler is a neat freak. It’s just that, if he waited much longer, the trunk might start overflowing with the remains of his favorite post-workout snack.

“Every week or so, I’ll have to clean out, like 10 Rice Krispies Treats wrappers,” Kessler says.

At any given moment in the back of Kessler’s car, you can usually find an assortment of snacks more often associated with an eight-year-old than one of the world’s best middle distance runners: Rice Krispies Treats, fruit snacks, and apple sauce are all favorites of his. His go-to drink during workouts? Country Time Lemonade. He’s not especially picky, but whatever he refuels with on workout days needs to have sugar in it.

“I normally just go to Costco and I don’t really have a preferred brand, I just go get sugary snacks and grab a few of them,” Kessler says. “I just have a huge bag sitting at home that I just reach in and grab something random.”

Kessler’s fueling regimen may seem as if it’s straight out of a summer playdate, but he firmly believes it is one of the reasons why he went from missing the US World Championship team in 2023 to finishing 5th in the fastest Olympic 1500m final in history one year later. Kessler has continued his fine form in 2025, running a 3:46.90 mile at the Millrose Games — #2 all-time by an American, indoors or out — and sweeping the US indoor titles in the 1500m and 3000m.

“I’m pretty religious about my routines,” Kessler says. “They make such a huge difference.”

The genesis of this particular routine dates to the fall of 2023 and a conversation with Geoff Burns, a USOPC physiologist and elite ultrarunner. Burns, who earned his PhD in kinesiology from the University of Michigan, has known Kessler since his days as a high school star in Ann Arbor, Mich., and often consults with the inquisitive Kessler on aspects of his training.

Kessler went wire-to-wire to win the 1500m at USA Indoors in February (Kevin Morris photo)

At the time, Kessler was coming off a season in which he had lowered his personal bests to 1:45.80 in the 800 and 3:32.61 in the 1500 and won the mile at the World Road Running Championships in Riga. But Kessler had fallen short of his biggest goal, finishing 6th in the 1500 at the US championships. As he began preparations for the Olympic year of 2024, he wanted to ensure he left no stone unturned. The conversation turned to Kessler’s workout-day fueling routine. Or rather, his lack of one.

“I’d finish a workout and I would just kind of wait until the next meal,” Kessler said. “So normally I’d go home and eat. But sometimes if you’re going to a restaurant or cooking, it’s upwards of an hour…There was nothing deliberate or intentional about my approach.”

Immediately, Burns saw room for improvement.

“I think one of the most important things, if not the single most important thing a runner can do to stay injury-free is just to be well-fueled all the time,” Burns says. “…The crux of that is carbohydrate availability. Carbohydrates are king. Essentially the dialogue then became, honestly, if nothing else, just prioritize getting in carbohydrates, at a minimum, after every run, immediately. People talk about, say, a 30-minute window or whatever. I’m more of a proponent of a 5-10 minute window. Literally as soon as you stop your watch, you need to have a plan for getting ample amounts of carbohydrates in your body.”

The body’s primary source of fuel during workouts is glycogen, a form of glucose (aka sugar) that is stored in the muscles. Burns says that, during exercise, there are two things happening that make it important to refuel with carbs right away. First, the body’s muscle glycogen is being depleted. And second, the muscles are more insulin-sensitive, meaning they are better able to pull in carbohydrates and store them as glycogen ahead of the next workout.

“There is a lot of research on getting sugar immediately after training spiking your insulin levels, which actually improves recovery,” says Maddie Harris, a former University of Colorado runner and registered dietitian specializing in sports nutrition for endurance athletes. “It actually improves muscle glycogen storage, so you’re better at refueling and storing those carbs where they need to be post-training.”

Just how long the so-called “anabolic window” for optimal carb/protein uptake lasts after a workout is the subject of debate in the sports science community. But both Burns and Harris say getting carbs in quickly after a session is critical to ensuring that the body has enough glycogen stored in its muscles ahead of the next workout. Particularly if that next workout is only a few hours away.

“For somebody at a high level like Hobbs, who’s probably training twice in a day sometimes, that’s going to make all the difference with how you feel in that second run or the day after that,” Harris says. “At any level of running, it’s about who can stack training the best and come out the other side healthy, stronger, and ready to race.”

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Not all sugar is bad

Okay, so now the big question: why Rice Krispies Treats and Country Time?

“Rice Krispies Treats are, quite honestly, one of the best things you can eat [after a workout],” Burns says. “It sounds silly, but they really check a lot of boxes as far as sport nutrition goes…Rice with sugar is a nice mix of simple and complex carbs that are pretty efficient to get in your bloodstream.”

Kessler made the Olympic team in two events last year: the 800m and 1500m (Kevin Morris photo)

Typically, Kessler will consume a banana and some whey protein after a workout, in addition to a couple of gooey, marshmallowy Rice Krispies Treats. That fits with Harris’ recommendation to eat something with both protein and carbs. In her experience, athletes are usually good at the former, but not always the latter, and Harris says she is on board with Rice Krispies Treats as a source of carbs.

“What I run into the most with athletes is they are not getting enough carbs as a whole,” Harris says. “Especially pre-, during, and post-training, I’m always working with athletes on trying to get more.”

Kessler’s use of Country Time Lemonade also stems from that conversation with Burns in the fall of 2023. Previously, Kessler would bring a water bottle to his track sessions, but wouldn’t always drink from it. Burns felt he could maximize the gains from his workout by making sure he remained properly fueled throughout.

“If you’re going to do intervals at the track and you go for your warmup, you do your drills, strides, then you start doing your intervals,” Burns says. “By the time you’re done, you could be there for two hours. That’s not unreasonable. And I think it’s an enormous missed opportunity to be taking in calories during that time because your body is getting lower and lower on energy.”

Harris says that there is a misconception that distance runners need to be really good at burning fat. But during workouts, she says, carbohydrates are always going to be the best source of fuel. Compared to fats, they require less oxygen to be metabolized as fuel. And the longer your body can keep burning carbs rather than fats, the longer you can go without “bonking.”

“That feeling of all of a sudden it feels like you’re running through wet cement, that is happening when your body has to switch to a different fuel source that is less effective,” Harris says. “The idea behind getting enough carbohydrates is that you’re prolonging your time to exhaustion by adding extra fuel.”

So Harris is on board with fueling with carbs during workouts. And she says that, when it comes down to it, a sports drink like Gatorade and Country Time Lemonade are “almost the same.” The main difference is that lemonade lacks electrolytes, which Kessler compensates for by adding a pinch of salt on hot days.

“My blanket statement is that the drink that you’re going to drink is the best option for you,” Harris says. “Anything that has sugar or simple carbohydrates in there is going to be a good option.”

For Kessler, that is Country Time Lemonade — he’ll try to take a sip or two between every rep. It’s what his mom, Serena, a 2:44 marathoner, drank during her buildup for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials. More importantly, it tastes good.

“It’s cheap, it’s delicious, and it sits good enough [in my stomach],” Kessler says.

At first glance, Kessler’s workout fueling regimen hardly seems like the diet of champions. But Harris says there is a time and place for sugar in an elite athlete’s diet.

Kessler finished 5th in the 1500m in his first Olympic appearance last summer (Kevin Morris photo)

“I think, as a community, runners in general, we get pretty caught up in those semantics and the idea that something with sugar being bad and something with less sugar being good,” Harris says. “And that’s really not the case. Especially if we’re trying to use it for fuel, sugar is helpful, and it doesn’t necessarily matter where it’s coming from if we’re able to get that in…Our body’s not like, woah, this is sugar from lemonade, what are you doing? It sees sugar, and it’s going to use that. It’s not like he’s drinking Country Time Lemonade all day long. He’s using it as a tool to help with performance during training. And that’s the same for a gel or energy chews.”

Kessler says he doesn’t really drink Country Time Lemonade or eat Rice Krispies Treats outside of workouts — with multiple workouts per week, sometimes two per day, he already consumes enough as it is. And he admits he will occasionally get “flavor fatigue” and mix things up by trying a different snack or the high-carb drink from Blank’s Sports Nutrition, a Flagstaff-based company where his training partner Morgan Beadlescomb works. At this point, however, Kessler is committed to getting some form of carbs in during and after his workouts, no matter the taste.

“I view it as a part of the session,” Kessler says. “It’s my job. It’s not really an optional thing. I’m on the clock until I’ve gotten all my nutrition in.”

Kessler says that some of his training partners have gotten on board as well. American 800-meter record holder Bryce Hoppel is now a Country Time guy during workouts, and Kessler will often toss him a Rice Krispies Treat or two when they’re done with a session.

One thing Kessler doesn’t take before workouts is sodium bicarbonate. While bicarb has become popular for middle-distance athletes in recent years, and Kessler does sometimes use it before races (he took it before the 3000 at USA Indoors, but not the 1500), he is still not completely sold on its effectiveness.

“It feels a little bit like Pascal’s wager to me,” Kessler says. “It doesn’t really hurt anything and it could help, but I don’t really notice a difference when I take it versus I haven’t.”

When it comes to the factors in an athlete’s routine that can make a difference in performance, Burns says bicarb might account for 1% of that. Good fueling and nutrition, Burns says, is more like 10% — maybe 20% or 30%.

Kessler’s new fueling routine was not the only reason he was able to go from 1:45 and 3:32 in the 800 and 1500 in 2023 to 1:43 and 3:29 in 2024, making the Olympic team in both events. He also overhauled his approach to training before last season, largely eliminating runs over seven miles. And Kessler is still young enough (he turn 22 next week) where he should be able to improve each year as long as he can staying healthy and consistent in training. But he believes that staying properly fueled is a big part of that.

“It’s super simple, but it’s made the biggest difference in my consistency,” Kessler says. “I absolutely swear by it. For just being able to do more training and stay healthy, I think it’s the most low-hanging fruit for people trying to up their game.”

Talk about Kessler’s fueling regime on the world-famous LetsRun.com fan forum / messageboard: MB: Way better than bicarb? How Country Time Lemonade and Rice Krispies Treats fueled Hobbs Kessler’s rise to the top.