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.
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