Kensi Renneberg: "Name a Sport and I'll Do It"

July 06, 2026By Emma Skye

Kensi joined Blonyx for a run around the Vancouver seawall just before heading north to begin the next chapter of her journey. Before moving to Vancouver for medical school, running wasn't part of her life, but within a year of arriving, she'd fully embraced the city's outdoor culture, picking up a bike, a pair of skis, and a pair of running shoes. "And now here we are," she laughs.

A Sport for Every Season

Ask what her favourite sport is and Kensi will tell you that she doesn't have one. "I'm really lucky to love a lot of sports, to the point where I don't feel like I have to pick just one to focus on. It really depends on what my friends are doing, and what the season is." That seasonality shows up as road running and trail running when the weather allows, bikepacking trips through the summer, hiking and backpacking, skiing both resort and backcountry come winter, swimming, and the occasional triathlon thrown in for good measure. "Literally any sport you want to do, I will do it with you, I promise, with a smile on my face. Or at least I will try to."

Part of what makes this work is the way her communities overlap and feed into each other. Kensi’s medical school friends got her into running and in turn, she's pulled them into cycling. "I really think there's that mutual back and forth of you show me your world, I show you mine. And it just kind of blossoms."

Bikepacking on a Budget

Her first bikepacking trip was less about fancy gear and more about resourcefulness. "As with any sport, it can be expensive as [heck], especially if you want to do it correctly." Kensi kitted out a regular bike that wasn't built for touring with what she had. Dry bags and ski straps. Cargo bibs stuffed with extra gear. Even a bear spray holster, repurposed to hold her tent poles. "Anything to save money," she recalls, then laughs, "and it worked. Now I'm addicted."

Asked whether she'd swapped out the bear spray entirely for tent pole storage, she's quick to clarify. "The bear spray always stays in the bibs on the body. You've got to be ready at any given moment." Fair enough, especially from someone who, when asked whether she'd rather deal with bears or Vancouver drivers, didn't hesitate. "I would pick bears over Vancouver drivers every day."

While her bikebacking setup has gotten an upgrade since those early days, what keeps her coming back to bikepacking is discovering new places. "I think it's just such a fantastic way to do that. You can cover ground a little more quickly than on foot, but it's still just you and your body and your strength carrying you forward."

Fueling for the Ride

Like a lot of endurance athletes, Kensi learned to take fueling seriously after first ignoring it. Cramping, bonking, the general misery of under-fueling. She'd assumed these things just came with the territory. "When I started to feel the consequences beyond, like, an hour or two of any kind of sport, I realized nutrition might actually have something to do with how I was feeling."

She recalls booking once on the Mount Baker hill climb. "There were definitely tears. I had to stop and lay on the side of the road." Drivers slowed down with concerned looks. The cyclists around her, on the other hand, just smiled and kept going. "It's like, oh yeah, she's alive, that's all that matters."

These days her fueling is more dialed in, though it varies by sport. Running is where she sticks rigidly to what she knows works. "With other sports I can kind of eat whatever. But with running, I'm very lucky to have products and brands that I know work for me." A typical day starts with eggs, veggies, toast, and a strong matcha, and ends with Blonyx Creatine mixed into a scoop of Egg White Protein Isolate. "It's like drinking a glass of chocolate milk as a nightcap!"

She first discovered Blonyx after joining the Samsara Cycle Club triathlon team a couple of years ago, when the team introduced her to the products. What started with the Egg White Protein Isolate quickly expanded to the Beet It gels, creatine, and electrolytes, but the protein is her favourite, "Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Egg White Protein Isolate. As someone who can't have dairy, it's one of the best things I've ever tasted. It's nutritious, but I would drink it even if it had nothing to do with nutrition."

Kensi with 4 bags of Blonyx Egg White Protein Isolate

Finding Her People

Beyond introducing her to Blonyx, Samsara Cycle Club gave Kensi a welcoming place to land in Vancouver's cycling scene. "They're a local, Vancouver-based, female-owned cycling and triathlon gear brand, now expanding into running. They're truly by women, for women, by the community, for the community." Her advice for anyone intimidated by the cycling world, especially anyone who hasn't felt represented in traditional endurance spaces, is to start by finding a community like that one.

Her other piece of advice for newcomers is to figure out what you actually enjoy about a sport before worrying about what it's supposed to look like. "There's this idea of cycling that you have to wear tight lycra and be as aero as possible and stick to city streets. But when you expand your scope beyond that, there's so much to the world of cycling. It can be whatever you want it to be."

What's Next

Kensi has officially graduated from medical school and is now Dr. Renneberg. She's made the move north to Carrier Sekani and Lheidli T'enneh territory in central Northern BC, where she's starting her residency in Indigenous Family Medicine. The north is exactly what she expected, in the best way. "It's so, so beautiful and the people are so kind and welcoming."

Kensi's mixed Anishinaabe Cree Métis and European heritage shapes how she sees the world. As someone who is white-presenting, she's also keenly aware of the privilege that affords her, "I come into healthcare with the immense privilege and ability to advocate for my people within our very harmful, colonial healthcare system that continues to silence Indigenous voices."

Her residency is grounded in what's called a two-eyed seeing approach, which values Western and traditional forms of medicine equally and as complementary to each other. During her rotations in Nisga'a and Valemount she saw this put into practice. "The human connections are priceless, and inspire me daily."

She's already been finding her way into the backcountry, spending a week hiking the Berg Lake trail near Valemount with her mom and starting to explore the trails around Prince George. "They're incredibly lush and peaceful." With over 50 trails saved on AllTrails spanning BC's north, she's going to be busy.

Beyond that, the bucket list keeps growing. "Northern BC is so beautiful, so underrated. There's such a plethora of running and riding and skiing up there that we just don't talk about down here." She's not done chasing race goals, either, "Probably a full Ironman in some capacity someday. It's like you just kind of have to write it down, right? But we'll go one year at a time for now."