Heather Schmidt

Back in July, Heather was Day 54 of our 100 in 100. That story covered how she got here and what this place carried her through. If you haven’t read it, start there.

This one is different. Her coaches and teammates picked her as October’s Prototype of the Month, and she’s about to move to Switzerland for two years. So we asked her a few more questions and pulled eight years of her training history. Her answers and her numbers tell the same story.

A ridiculous hour

She isn’t exaggerating about the hour. Of her 1,672 sign-ins, 1,065 are at the 5:00 a.m. class. That’s nearly two out of every three workouts she has ever done here, all before sunrise. Her name is on the board in 386 different weeks since October 2018.

The consistency hasn’t slowed down. She made the Committed Club (15 or more classes in a month) in eight of the first nine months of 2026, including September, while getting ready to move overseas.

Ask what she’ll remember and she doesn’t name a workout. “They’re all the little moments over the years,” she says, “the conversations before and after class, celebrating successes, doing the Open together, the friendly competition, and the friendships that have developed outside the gym.”

It started one-on-one

Heather’s first sign-in is dated October 3, 2018. It wasn’t a class. It was a personal training session with Coach Jon Collette. Friends Traci and Colin Lake had talked her into trying Prototype, but the group classes intimidated her, so she started with a coach and a barbell and nobody watching.

Once she had that confidence she kept going. She joined the 5 a.m. crew in 2019 and kept booking sessions with Jon now and then until late 2021, 36 in all. Then she started bringing people in herself. Her former colleague Emily Oberlee is a 5 a.m. regular too, and the two still see each other there most mornings before the sun is up.

“All the coaches bring their own style,” she says, “and over the years, they have pushed me to do things I probably wouldn’t have thought I could do.”

Stronger in her fifties

Here is the line from her answers we kept coming back to:

We checked, and her training log agrees. Here are her personal records by year.

Her best year for PRs so far was 2024, with 54. This year she already has 44 with a full quarter to go, and ten of them came after her 100 in 100 story ran in July. Some of the records she broke in 2026 had stood for five or six years:

That last one came ten days before she filled out her Prototype of the Month form. With a move overseas on the calendar, she beat a record that had stood since June 2020.

People who notice when you’re not there

We asked who at Prototype made the biggest impact on her. She named Jon first, and then she named everyone else.

She’s been that person for other people too. In 2024 her peers and coaches nominated her for the Mindset Award, and she finished one vote behind Gillian Barry. In 2025 the two of them co-captained Team Mindset in the Prototype Open. A lot of people in the 5 a.m. class would tell you Heather is one of the people who notices when they’re not there.

Switzerland

This fall her three kids are all in college, and Heather is starting a two-year work assignment in Switzerland. “I’m adjusting to a very different stage of life!” she says.

If you only know her from 5 a.m., here’s more of Heather. She loves to travel, cook, golf (“although I’m not very good at it”), walk, and try new things. She ran two marathons when she was younger. She’s taken art and pottery classes, and recently a glassblowing class. She gave up skiing after a fall and ACL surgery, but she plans to try again while she’s living abroad, “or at least enjoy après-ski.” She already has a list of weekend getaways.

She also has a plan for the training.

Her goal is longevity, and she means more than lifting. She has a high-pressure job, and she’s found that sleep, wholesome food and a spiritual routine matter as much as the barbell for handling it. Asked where all this is headed, she answered this way:

Eight years ago she was too nervous to walk into a class. Now she’s moving to another country and already planning which gym she’ll join there.

Go get it, Heather. The 5 a.m. will be here when you get back.

This story was written from Heather’s own Prototype of the Month answers, her 100 in 100 story, and eight years of her logged training history, with the help of AI writing tools. Every figure comes from her own Wodify record. The facts, quotes, and experiences are Heather’s own.