Lindsey Heim

Little, yellow, different...

It was finally beautiful and sunny for that past few days!!! just what I needed!!! YAY!

Even though I have been at school until way too late in the evening, I have gotten about a good 1-1.5 hrs of daylight left to get in some good workouts. This week I am starting my 'peak.' In other words, this is really when it is going to start to hurt. Good.

I am looking forward to this paradigm shift. I never thought that I would get to this point, but after putting in some very solid, consistent weeks this winter, this is one of the few times in my training that I am ready, and feel ready for a change, and am ready for more. Albeit nothing was perfect, but this winter, my tempo runs and rides were solid. My long runs have been dialed into some good M pace work. My long bikes have been strong and most I got them to the wattage that I wanted to. I know that the heavy drill and kick work has payed off in the pool. My lifting has felt like it has helped me out on overall strength. Besides the absurd amount of times that I have gotten sick, I have been feeling strong. Lastly, my weight has finally broken through a plateau that has plagued me for several weeks- I really don't feel that much smaller, and I know that I still have a long way to go (goal: get down to 140, which is not any magic number other than A) it is less lbs, and that makes my life easier, and B) then I can say that I have lost 100 lbs- sort of a 'century club' thing) and every bit lost helps and is less that I need to lug around a course. This morning, I wanted to crack out my summer cotton dress pants, but they did not even look good hanging off of my butt and hips, I guess I will consider this a good thing. :)

So, yesterday I ran easy from my house over to the track at UNO. Finally tried out this Daniels' "I" pace thing- never got to this point last year due to ITB crap. Yeah, it was hard, it hurt, and my body was really wondering what was going on, but I did it, and it was a good solid workout.

The one thing that I didn't expect, and came as a bit of a surprise to me is the stigma of the track. I went there simply to have a level surface to run on, and used my forerunner for pace (I thrive on consistency. :) ), but when finishing my warmup, my mind was flooded with all of my memories that went along with the track: lap running punishments in band, horrific mile 'run' fitness tests in P.E. classs. The only memories that I had of a track were from when I couldn't even run a lap without walking to catch my breath. I'm serious- I was that girl in gym class. The track was always something that I dreaded, a window that I looked into- never from, somewhat of a 'special club' that I did not even meet the membership criteria. I watched friends in their track meets, completely in awe, admiration, and respect knowing that I was completely and utterly incapable of what they were doing.

Now, here I was, running around a track at what I would like to consider a good clip. Me. Running. On a track. Being fast.

Wow.

At first the horrific memories of the track started to bring me down, and there were floods of thoughts of the self doubt and shame, but then there was this paradigm shift. I had business to do- and it was going to get done. There I was, doing exactly what I needed to accomplish that day. It is something that for some people, is not that great and possibly downright pathetic, but I know that for the person who I was several years ago- what I was doing was the unthinkable and impossible. I realized that yesterday, I had the opportunity to finally give myself a gift- and that is exactly what I was doing.