I, Lucie Beatrix, invite you to join me on an adventure that started with a spontaneous decision to leave the winter chill of New York City behind and start a fresh life in sunny Austin, Texas. This change wasn't just a shift in location, but a complete transformation of my life, my approach to physical fitness, and my perception of myself. From working behind the scenes at a photo shoot, to training with a competitive team, and eventually falling in love, this journey has been full of surprises.
In this transformative phase of my life, I not only learnt how to be a girlfriend but also how to let go of the many identities I had accumulated over the years in the bustling city of New York. As I navigated the world of competitive running, my focus gradually shifted from qualifying for the 2024 US Olympic Marathon Trials to prioritizing my well-being over my physical appearance. I'll share how this new perspective led to breakthroughs in races and changed my relationship with food, sobriety, and my body. Reflect with me on the importance of flexibility, trust, and not setting too many expectations in life as we approach a new year filled with endless possibilities.
I, Lucie Beatrix, invite you to join me on an adventure that started with a spontaneous decision to leave the winter chill of New York City behind and start a fresh life in sunny Austin, Texas. This change wasn't just a shift in location, but a complete transformation of my life, my approach to physical fitness, and my perception of myself. From working behind the scenes at a photo shoot, to training with a competitive team, and eventually falling in love, this journey has been full of surprises.
In this transformative phase of my life, I not only learnt how to be a girlfriend but also how to let go of the many identities I had accumulated over the years in the bustling city of New York. As I navigated the world of competitive running, my focus gradually shifted from qualifying for the 2024 US Olympic Marathon Trials to prioritizing my well-being over my physical appearance. I'll share how this new perspective led to breakthroughs in races and changed my relationship with food, sobriety, and my body. Reflect with me on the importance of flexibility, trust, and not setting too many expectations in life as we approach a new year filled with endless possibilities.
I have so much exciting stuff to share with you guys, so let's get into my show. This is the Lucy Beatrix podcast. It's been a minute since I've put up an episode and if you didn't know anything about me, in a nutshell, I was a fashion model who worked for over a decade appearing on the covers of several magazines. I worked for all the big brands over the years and I stumbled into the sport of competitive running. I got into marathoning. I ran a 244 marathon last year at the Chicago Marathon and honestly, if you ask me who are you, I would say I'm just a girl living my life. I've done a lot of things. I wear a lot of hats, but today we're just going to be talking about what's been going on in my world and what I've been up to. So typically on my show if you go back and look at other episodes I've done I've talked about a lot of things. I've talked about the grief of losing my father suddenly six years ago, as he died sort of suddenly, and how I got over that. I've talked about getting sober and how making that lifestyle changed my life, or just deciding to clean up my act and not drink alcohol anymore Really changed my life and actually turned me into the runner that I am today, or somebody who has run rather competitive times in distances like the 5K, 10k, half marathon and beyond. I've done some crazy things like run 76 miles in a single day on a track. I participated in the speed project running from LA to Vegas. I've done all kinds of crazy stuff. If you know me, you know that. If you don't know me, welcome. That's kind of me. But yeah, so you know what's really crazy.
Speaker 1:It was about a year ago that I was sitting on a set at a photo studio where I was working behind the scenes, so I wasn't in front of the camera, I was working on the other side of the camera, working at this shoot, and I was in New York City and I looked around and New York was just starting to get pretty cold and turning into winter. It was dark and I said you know what? I'm not going to do this. I don't want to be in New York this winter. I need to get out of the city and make a radical, spontaneous, wild change. So what did I do? I packed my entire apartment up in Brooklyn and I literally just went to Austin, texas, which is a really random place for me to have chosen to go. It was a place that I had only been to once before for a race in 2021. And last year, I literally just took a backpack, moved my life to Austin, texas, and said I'm just going to try this out and see what the heck happens. So what happened?
Speaker 1:Originally, I went out to Austin, texas, to train with a very competitive team with a bunch of very up and coming athletes all going after that Olympic trials qualifying time, which was something that I was striving to obtain, and I went out there with this intent to just focus on running, make that my main thing. But what happened was I? Well, firstly, what happened is kind of funny, it's crazy. So I got out to Texas and I was training with this team and they're awesome, they're fast, they're just like so, so competitive and I ended up meeting a man and falling in love and kind of took a little detour. I actually ended up, instead of originally going out there and just training full time, I ended up finding someone and starting a totally new chapter, something beyond my wildest dreams, which was learning how to be a girlfriend, which, I know that sounds really weird, but for someone like me who had been living in New York City for 16 years. Up until that point, I learned how to be in a relationship with someone and that was really, that was my new lesson, or that was my new thing, that I was like, wow, this is really really wild and you frontier for me and at the same time, what coincided with this was really just having an awakening of figuring out who the heck I am, underneath the magazine portfolio of all the things that I shot for over the years and carrying these identities that I had kind of accumulated over all the time that I had in New York.
Speaker 1:Because in New York I am, I'm just a multifaceted person with all of these accomplishments, from when I was this Ford model at the top of my game, crushing it with my fashion modeling career, to then getting into running and just being like I'm a runner and a model and I write and I shoot and I work on all these different projects all the time. And out there, I was just a girl. I was just a random girl walking around the streets of Austin. Nobody knew anything about me. Really, I was just kind of anonymous again and it was kind of fun to just see what is what is my personality when I don't have all of these other things attached to me? Because in New York I walk down the street and any given day I run into people and I I see people from my past or all the different phases I've been through, whether it was when I was a yoga teacher. It's like people from the yoga studio or people who know me on the track is that crazy girl who's always on the track or people who know me from the Ford models day. Like I have all these different personalities of ways that people knew me here in New York, but then when I got to Texas, it was just like I could be stripped of all of that and just be the the raw person underneath and then have that coincide with meeting somebody completely new who didn't know this version of me or all these versions of me in New York and start a relationship. So it's kind of it's kind of crazy that like that's what happened when I went out to you are out to Austin a year ago.
Speaker 1:Well, I was out in Austin and I ended up getting an apartment there and spent a couple seasons living in Texas and all the while I was coming back and forth to New York. So I still had a photo studio job here in New York working behind the scenes, because my fashion modeling career kind of led me to this other career where I'd be working on shoots, not as the model, but on the other side of things doing various tasks, and so I would come back to New York a lot while I was living in Texas. So I still kind of always had one foot on the ground here in New York because I would still be working and I was still making most of my money working in New York for these weeks that I would come out and then I'd go back to Texas and take a break and then go back to New York, kind of going back and forth a lot. And then over the summer I realized that my running was really taking a turn. So when I ran that 244 marathon last fall in Chicago, it was a really big deal. That was something that said a lot to my community of other runners that I trained with, of hey, this running thing is serious and that was a time that a few years prior, would have qualified me for the 2020 US Olympic trials for the marathon. A 245 is what you needed to qualify for the Olympic trials I ran a 244.02. So it said to me that like I really have this talent and I want to foster it.
Speaker 1:But with running and athletics you can't always choose when and how you're going to be the best version of yourself as a competitive athlete. And for me, when I got to Texas and life kind of slowed down around me and I wasn't having this crazy adrenaline of living and working in New York City, I took running to a different place entirely. Instead of amping up my competitive side, of being like I got to win every single race and run all the distances and be crazy, instead I just took a more holistic approach to running of how can I run to feel the best? How can I run to feel like the best version of myself every day? Run to have energy instead of take away all my energy. How can I feel healthy? And that changed me. That changed me, it changed my training, it changed my entire approach and I ran for a totally different reason and all of my goals with like times and like competition kind of started to fade into a different place.
Speaker 1:And what happened is I think that I actually got a very healthy approach to running and I think that, like all of this life or death running that I was doing here in New York City changed and I just took a totally different approach and there were some days where I was kind of like what the hell am I doing? Like I'm not doing these early track practices, I'm not doing all these competitive things that I used to do. Instead, I'm just running the way that I used to way before I ever knew that I had any kind of talent or any kind of competitive side. I just ran for me to clear my head and feel good, and that's just kind of what I went back to. And in a weird way, I think that it helped me see all the other things in my life that could be like, could have more, more in them, so like having a relationship and having like that kind of like interpersonal connection with somebody else, and have other things that I could focus on, like writing and making music and all these other passions that kind of fell by the wayside when I got super into running. I could kind of I could foster those and so, in a weird way, this last year of since I ran that 244 in Chicago really became a totally different purpose in my life of figuring out what my actual purpose is and what do I find joy in and what kind of experiences do I want to have. And what did I end up doing? I ended up traveling with my boyfriend and having amazing dinners and going on little adventures with him and writing so much, so much, that I'm feeling more and more closer and closer towards my dream of publishing a book, and so, yeah, it's been just like an interesting incubating year, but it's also been just a time for me to figure out how, what makes me happy and what's going to continue to make me happy for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:So a few months ago, my boyfriend and I went to Europe. We went to Berlin to watch our friends compete in the Berlin marathon. It was a race that I was originally going to run, but then, just you know, I didn't feel like everything was in line for me to even try to attempt to train and then compete in a marathon, so I just went to Berlin to watch my friends run. It was great. Then we went to Copenhagen and then, when we came back from Europe to the States, I ended up just coming back to New York, and I've been in New York now for the past few months working and focusing on my photo studio, life stuff and I just wanted to close out this year having a lot of amazing shoots under my belt and reminding myself of like that version of me, and when I want to focus on a photo shoot in the photo studio, working behind the scenes, these people, they're like my family.
Speaker 1:I love them. They're so talented. They've been in the industry for decades. They know me in a way that that's like they know that I'm a runner and they know that I love running. But that's not how they see me Like. I'm not just like Lucy the runner or Lucy the model. I'm somebody who they work with. That they just see me in a certain way. I add value to the day with, like the work that I do and I feel like that's a really cool thing to have because I can take a step away from, like, all the other identities that I've had. So it's been really helpful for me to be working like that.
Speaker 1:But but that said, you know, the big question is okay. So, like now, what? Like? I've had this amazing year of learning all these different things about myself and I I'm I'm just as curious as I was last year, about like what my potential is with running, but it just isn't a totally different way. So I feel like, you know, there was this dark cloud that came over me.
Speaker 1:It was a few months ago when I kind of realized my window to qualify for the 2024 US Olympic Marathon Trials which is originally my goal for a while Like I really wanted to be on that starting line in February at the US Olympic Trials and prove that I like I deserve to be here. That goal is now kind of it's fallen by the wayside, it's been replaced with other things and I used to feel kind of sad about it. I was like, oh my God, did I just like give up on myself? Did I like miss my opportunity? But in a weird way, I don't feel that way. I feel actually kind of relieved. I'm feeling like you know what that wasn't meant to be. My body and my mind weren't in the right place to be able to go after that goal and run either at Berlin or CIM, which were the two races that I had lined up for this past season to like try to go after this goal, and it didn't happen because I wasn't. I wasn't in a place where I was able to log these 20 mile runs and do all the things that you have to do, and that's okay, because I've learned so many other things.
Speaker 1:But I will say that it's been interesting to see how my relationship with my sobriety and food and all these other things have come into play. So a little bit more about my story this is something that I've talked about on a lot of episodes is how I, when I was a fashion model for over a decade, I ended up coming to some testy, testy situations with my relationship with food, and I don't think that it's. I mean, I guess some people on the outside might might say that it's eating disorder behavior, but in the way I see it, I see it as I did what I needed to do to get to where I wanted to go and in the times that I started modeling and the times throughout my career where it was, it was a matter of livelihood, of how I ate, to then be able to perform, to work, as in basically being in a very restricted state for a long period of time, to be a certain size, to continue to get booked. It's like what you hear about in the shows and the documentaries about. You know the horrible things that happen with fashion modeling. Yeah, all that it's just like.
Speaker 1:That was my life, like I just I had to do a lot of stuff to stay a certain way. The lifestyle was hectic, it was crazy. There were people telling me I needed to be a certain size. There were contracts that you know were dictating what I needed to do to stay a certain size. It was insane and that was my life for so long. And I think it's very hard to like shake that off, like once I didn't have the pressure of modeling. It's like it wasn't, like I could just wake up and be like okay, well, now I'm just gonna be like this kind of person who eats a certain kind of way. It's like no, that stuff has stayed in me and it probably will stay in me for forever because it's just the way that I was brought up. Like, can you imagine growing up in front of the camera and having people say things like wow, like your face looks so much better, if only you're thinner? Or you know you really notice that extra little bit on your hips, everywhere else in your body, because you know the stuff is just ingrained in you, it just becomes part of you and it's just like it's kind of crazy to think that like after all that then to get into running and have running be like also kind of a weird thing with all that stuff.
Speaker 1:I just kind of think that this past year has been me decoupling myself from how I look, like how I look doesn't matter. Now it's more about how do I feel, what's gonna make me feel the best, and that's kind of just been my approach and I think it's pretty awesome. Like I don't really say that I've like recovered, because that's a strange word when I think it's like not, I don't fit that textbook. Somebody had like a severe eating disorder and they were like obsessing about how they looked and then they suddenly woke up and had a hamburger and fries and they recovered. I don't think that's anything to do with my narrative. Mine is more wow, I was under so much stress for so long. Everything depended on how I ate for how I was gonna make money and make my rent, and then I could finally see the other side of it and be like wait, this is not how my life has to be, like my value doesn't lie in how I look. So, that said, like the other thing about that is that then I, you know, I think there was a period of time where it's like my value.
Speaker 1:I was learning this very slowly and gradually, like, okay, my appearance isn't what makes me important or my appearance isn't my purpose. And then it became about running and I was like, okay, well, I can run fast and like prove myself and take this body that was like kind of manipulated with the modeling industry, and then I can make it go fast and like defy all the things that all those people ever said about me and show that I can, like I'm worth it, you know. And then it's like this past year has been like no, I don't even have to prove myself with speed either, I can just exist. And you know, I think that that's kind of cool as well. And so, with that newfound mindset, it's taking on this whole other approach to running, where I'm just kind of like I will run and compete if and when. That feels right to me and it feels inspiring and it doesn't feel like a chore, it doesn't feel like something I have to do and all the while I've been focusing so much on strength and staying really fit in a totally different kind of way.
Speaker 1:So, as some of you guys know, over the summer I got injured and I really hurt my shin. So not only was I already feeling kind of funny about running in general and training and the workload required to train for marathons, I also was injured. So it was like the decision was made for me that like, hey, you're not gonna be getting out there running these long distances, so what can I do instead? And the same amount of time that I would put in a day towards my running. I just found other things to do. So I started doing some really crazy incline walking, which sounds crazy but like your heart rate gets up pretty high. It's almost the same as like running.
Speaker 1:But I started getting into incline walking and, as you know, I'm obsessed with the stair climber and doing all these other things to stay physically fit, aerobically fit, and it's been awesome because, like I step on that treadmill and it has nothing to do with like I'm not comparing myself to myself the way I used to, where I'm like, okay, I better run 10 miles and under an hour go. Now it's like I'm gonna push myself, but the times and the distances have no relevance and don't really matter, cause it's like nobody knows the difference between hiking for four miles at a 15% incline but they don't know what that even means, like it's like that's to me. It's intense and it's awesome, but it's like it's just like I'm just I'm seeing little improvements for where I am on any given day, but it has nothing to do with like what that looks like in terms of paces, of how it's gonna look in a race and yeah, it can kind of. It's kind of freed me from any kind of like expectations. But I still managed to stay incredibly strong and, if anything, I'm probably stronger from the inside out by doing these other kinds of cross training Exercises and I love that. I'm so excited about that. Like I get so psyched when I wake up and I'm like I'm gonna go do this crazy ass incline walk or even something Spontaneous. Like the other day, someone from the photo studio I work at invited me to come out to New Jersey and we did this crazy hike for four hours it was, it was cold, it was steep, it was insane and I was like damn, my body is fucking strong for doing this and it made me feel great. So it's been interesting to just see how, like, my training has kind of evolved and I don't feel Pressure or stress like I don't feel like I have to prove myself the way that I once did. Now I have a lot of. I've made a lot of friends this year, a lot of new friends that are all awesome runners. They're amazing and I'm inspired by them. I love also giving people advice for like coaching and stuff like I'm still a running coach. I still love guiding people in ways that have helped me to help other people get to where they want to go with their goals and so like that's still very much in me and I know that when the fire is there again and when it makes sense to compete, it's gonna be awesome because I'm gonna feel like I know I know how much I Actually am doing it from the bottom of my heart versus for anybody else. So I did sign up for the Chicago Marathon in 2024. So next fall for this, next year, I do have a race on the books of like that could happen. I mean I'm gonna see where I'm at in the summer and see like if, if and when that makes sense and Just go from there and like who knows, things could pop up.
Speaker 1:I think about the year that I had one of the huge, the biggest breakthroughs in my running career was in 2021, where I Kind of just started doing these races spontaneously. I would jump into them with like very little notice and I would run these crazy PRs, and I love that approach. I think that's kind of how I roll. I think that's the kind of athlete I am. I like just kind of not having too much expectation and just like surprising myself. It's like under promise and over deliver. I like doing that to myself, like I like to under promise to myself and over deliver. I'd be like, yeah, like you just ran a 34, 37, 10 K out of nowhere. That's that's what I'm talking about. Like that's the kind of athlete that I think I am. I think it's very, it's like just my style. Like I don't like to be too planned. I think it may be it's like an Aquarius thing or something, but yeah, so I do have a race on the books for 2024. If anyone's wondering.
Speaker 1:In the meantime, I am in New York right now. I've been in New York for a bit and I'm going back to Texas for Thanksgiving and I'm gonna just kind of like play it by ear again. This is again just like my personality. I'm gonna go back out to Texas. I just did a bunch of shoots here in New York. So, like I have a few more shoots at the end of this week and I'm gonna get on a plane, go back to Texas and I'm just gonna see how it goes. Like, I love Texas. That's where my like official home is now. I mean, that's where I live with my boyfriend and I'm gonna continue to try to like find work out there, come back to New York when I need to for shoots out here. I'm kind of doing like both New York and Texas right now and See, see what happens, but I'm very open to like what the future holds.
Speaker 1:I think that like the best thing I learned in my recovery program in 12th step is like you can only control so many things. And in my life I can control Day to day. Like I know I'm gonna go work out in the gym every day, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna stay sober, I'm gonna do these things, get a good night's sleep every night, eat the same foods I love to eat that make me feel the best, and Then that's about about it Like I'm just controlling the things that I can and then just letting anything else happen as it does and like go where the wind Takes me, and it's kind of an amazing place to be, and I think about where I was a year ago, before I went to Texas originally, and I didn't have this kind of like flexibility of being malleable and Not being too attached to an outcome. I think that's the lesson here is to detach ourselves from expected outcomes and just live your life and Trust the process and be, be in the moment, be present. That's everything and it's gotten me so far this past year. So, yeah, that's what I have to say today.
Speaker 1:That's my, my update, and I hope that something about this speaks to you. I'm hoping to also put up more episodes more consistent, consistently. I took a little break there, but I'm gonna be back, especially as I have been coaching these athletes. I get so excited for them and I love sharing their process along the way. It's really inspiring to see what other people do and just feel like you've given them a little tool to put in their toolbox and then go do big things. So, yeah, if you're an athlete who wants to be coached by me, I am opening up my roster to start taking people on the new year. So let me know, send me a DM on Instagram. I'm at Lucie Beatrix L-u-c-i-e-b-a-t-r-i-x, or go to my website, lucie Beatrix com. Fill out the form for submitting to be one of my athletes and let's talk. If you have a big goal and you want to go after it, maybe we can make that happen. So until next time, just be fast, just win.