Here’s your summer challenge: log 11,000 feet of elevation in 30 days. Work your way up—walking, running, or hiking—and track your cumulative vertical gain in Strava’s to complete those 11,000 feet. Sound absurd? That depends on your perspective.

From the streets of Manhattan, you’d need to scale the Empire State Building steps nine times to log 11,000 feet. From the edge of the Grand Canyon, you’d still need to climb 1,000 feet after doing a round-trip from rim to rim to rim. From Mount Everest Base Camp, 11,000 feet of elevation gets you right below the highest summit in the world.

From your nearest favorite trailhead, 11,000 feet is the right goal if you want to extend your trail running abilities to new heights. That total is just shy of what competitors climb during the Wasatch Mountains UTMB . (There, runners climb 11,318 feet over 31 gnarly miles.) It’s also attainable when you factor 30 days with the work and family needs of daily life that conspire to keep you from biting off big distances and vertical gains in such epic-sized chunks.

Wherever you live, you can find terrain that burns your glutes, quads, calves, and lungs—even if you live in the flatlands, where a climb means heading to stadium stairs at the local high school. Wherever you find your vertical, it’s worth it, because the feeling you get from answering that challenge is hard to match.

Take it from , a professional ultrarunner and coach who’s won the famed Pikes Peak Ascent and UTMB Speedgoat 50K: “Literally running up a mountain is empowering,” Canaday says. “It builds mental toughness and creates confidence.”

Plus, the physical benefits are hard to deny. Running uphill, Canaday notes, can create a great training dynamic where you have less impact force with each step, but you can learn to generate more power with each stride. Not only that, Canaday adds, “It’s an awesome way to challenge the heart and lungs with minimal impact.”

If you want even more rewards, finish Strava’s HOKA Be the GOAT Challenge (live from July 15 to August 15), and you’ll earn a Speedgoat 6 digital badge and a special gift mailed directly from Hoka. If you go big and log the most overall elevation gain over the challenge’s 30 days, you’ll claim a year’s supply (12 pairs!) of Hoka trail running shoes, a trophy to commemorate your victory, plus a free entry to any one of the following U.S. : , , , , and .

And if you live in , , , or , you can level up the fitness test—and your prize chances—with Strava’s . Take on your local running community by completing the most reps of your local hill climb over 30 days. The men’s and women’s entrants who log the most reps on that climb also win entry into a 2025 U.S. UTMB race of their choice.

Live elsewhere? What’s the tallest climb in your area? Have you run or hiked it? Probably not as much as possible within a 30-day period. This challenge is your summer call to elevate.

Up and Away: Claim Some Serious Vert at the Steepest, Most Destination-Worthy Routes for Incline Training

Cactus to Clouds Trail, aka Skyline Route—Palm Springs, CA

20.3 miles; 10,715 feet total elevation gain

Plan accordingly for extreme temperature swings on this leg-burning point-to-point from the desert floor to alpine wilderness.

Manitou Incline—Manitou Springs, CO

1-mile climb (4 miles round-trip); 2,000 feet total elevation gain

This is a direct staircase climb (loop back from top via the three-mile Barr Trail descent) that’s popular among locals and visitors. Reservations are required.

Adirondacks High Peaks Circuit—Newcomb, NY

Mileage and total elevation gain varies depending on mountain(s) climbed. 

Of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks (above 4,000 feet), only about half have designated trails. The highest peak, Mount Marcy (5,344 feet), offers 3,166 feet of elevation gain over 14.8 miles.

Mahoosuc Traverse—Andover, ME

30.4 miles; 10,577 feet total elevation gain

Due to giant boulders that require scrambling over and squeezing between, this point-to-point is known as the hardest single mile on the Appalachian Trail.

Slickrock Creek Trail—Robbinsville, NC

12.1 miles; 4,337 feet total elevation gain 

Numerous stream crossings help cool off hikers along the steep and taxing wilderness out-and-back that locals lovingly refer to as “the Ballbuster.”

Mount Shasta, Avalanche Gulch Route—Mount Shasta, CA

10.1 miles; 7,217 feet total elevation gain

Though it’s a technical out-and-back that requires an ice axe, crampons, helmet, and skills (guide recommended), this route caters to beginner mountaineers seeking the 14,180-foot summit of this volcanic icon.

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HOKAÂź is one of the fastest-growing performance footwear and apparel brands in history. Conceived in the mountains, HOKA footwear delivers an unprecedented combination of enhanced cushioning and support for a uniquely smooth ride. Every day, HOKA pushes the innovation and design of its footwear and apparel by teaming up with a deep roster of world champions, tastemakers, and everyday athletes. From finish lines to everyday life, HOKA fans love the brand for its bold and unexpected approach and its belief in the power of humanity to create change for a better world. HOKA empowers a world of athletes to fly over the earth. For more information, visit or follow @HOKA. #FlyHumanFly

The post Is This Running Challenge Ridiculously Hard, Ridiculously Fun, or Both? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

It’s been a busy summer for Heather Jackson. That might have something to do with the fact that she’s a professional athlete in two sports: ultrarunning and gravel cycling. She placed fifth in the 200-mile Unbound Gravel Race across Kansas in early June. Weeks later, she ran her way to a seventh-place finish at the . She trains in both sports daily, often spending four or five hours in the morning either on the bike or on foot, then switching to the other sport for an easier effort before dinner.

Despite that rigorous routine, Jackson says it could be worse, having spent 15 years as a professional triathlete who nabbed a pair of Ironman 70.3 World Championship podium finishes in 2012 and 2013. “It’s a little bit easier with just riding and running,” she says. “I actually have one less sport to work on.”

Plus, the two disciplines complement each other well. “I’m still balancing the two [sports] and kind of blocking them out depending on what event is next,” Jackson says, “but I mostly just continue to do both each day.” The longer daylight hours certainly help to maximize summer days, as does the outdoor versatility of the new Hoka , Jackson’s training shoe of choice. The nicer weather doesn’t hurt either, especially when it comes to getting family and friends outside before, after—and even during—her training to add some variety and fun to the double duty.

The 40-year-old has been an athlete her entire life, which she chalks up to her mother, who was a gym teacher in New Hampshire. “She had us in pretty much everything,” says Jackson. From tennis to basketball, lacrosse to horseback riding, Jackson’s not kidding about the “everything” part. “It was soccer and hockey that I excelled at and loved the most,” she explains. Jackson played ice hockey for Princeton and was close to making the 2006 Olympic hockey team before making the shift to triathlon.

Since switching from the regimented training of Ironman-distance road triathlons to gravel riding and trail running, Jackson says she loves not having to target a specific pace for every workout. “You’re climbing a canyon in Western States and you’re doing a 15-minute mile, but it’s irrelevant,” she says. “It’s more like, ‘What can you do to get up this terrain?’ It’s freeing.”

Jackson’s first 100-mile race was Arizona’s Javelina Jundred, in which she placed fifth in 2022 before winning it in 2023. She also started gravel racing in 2023 and has seen pretty much immediate success. “These two new sports are so fun,” she says. “Every single run and every single race is different terrain—you’re not staring at a watch. I now just get to be outside and see so many new places. Every day is new,” she says. “It’s refreshing.”

Living most of the year in Bend, Oregon, and training in Tucson, Arizona, during late winter and early spring, makes the most of her environment. While she skate-skis, runs, and snowshoe runs in the winter months, she’s recently been out on dirt almost every waking moment.

 

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“We have such good summer weather,” she says, “that I try to combine gravel riding and trail running with being outside, literally, as much as possible.” She and her husband and friends often go camping on weekends. They’ll all head out for their own rides or runs and then reconvene at the campsite. Or they’ll explore the many lakes in the wilderness areas surrounding Bend or nab last-minute backcountry permits to play on new trail systems.

“My sister grabbed a permit for the Green Lakes area one day,” Jackson explains. “So it was like, ‘OK, cool, tomorrow’s a run day.’” She says she feels fortunate to have both family and friends to go run trails or ride anything from Mount Bachelor to Smith Rock. Her parents recently moved to the Bend area and frequently do a ten-mile mountain bike loop, and Jackson will run alongside them.

Later this summer, Jackson will head to France, where she’ll run one of the UTMB races, either the 50K OCC (which she ran last summer), the 100K CCC, or the 106-mile UTMB. While she raced Western States in the Hoka Tecton X 2.5 (a prototype version of the Tecton X 3), she’ll be wearing the new Hoka Speedgoat 6 in the rugged Alps.

“To have the grip of the new Speedgoats is huge,” Jackson says, referring to the updated outsole that features Vibram Megagrip and toothier lugs than the Speedgoat 5. “I’ll wear the to hike Mount Bachelor and other rugged terrain around here—and for camping and just kicking around in the dirt,” Jackson says of the perfect shoe for being outside all summer long.

HOKA is one of the fastest-growing performance footwear and apparel brands in history. Conceived in the mountains, HOKA footwear delivers an unprecedented combination of enhanced cushioning and support for a uniquely smooth ride. Every day, HOKA pushes the innovation and design of its footwear and apparel by teaming up with a deep roster of world champions, tastemakers, and everyday athletes. From finish lines to everyday life, HOKA fans love the brand for its bold and unexpected approach and its belief in the power of humanity to create change for a better world. HOKA empowers a world of athletes to fly over the earth. For more information, visit or follow @HOKA.

The post How Ultrarunning’s Two-Sport Pro Gets the Most out of Summer appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.