The full Cocodona 250 women's podium has been settled, with former professional triathlete Heather Jackson confirmed second and Courtney Dauwalter completing the top three. The pair finished within hours of one another at the Flagstaff finish line on Thursday morning, more than a day after Rachel Entrekin's 56:09:50 overall victory and a fraction over four hours apart in elapsed time. All three women crossed before the runner-up in the men's race, an outcome that even regular Cocodona observers had not allowed themselves to predict.
Jackson, in only her second 200-mile finish, ran the second half of the course almost as conservatively as the first, holding station inside the women's top three from Skull Valley onwards and never spending more than a contractually required handful of minutes at any aid station. Her finishing time of 60:14:21 also stands as the fastest second-place women's mark in the race's history, eclipsing Heidi Strickler's 2024 effort by over an hour and matching the splits Jackson set out at the pre-race press call on Sunday afternoon.
Dauwalter's third place is, in some respects, the most surprising story line of the four. The four-time UTMB champion entered the race off a deliberate seven-week reset after Mont-Blanc training in Chamonix, opted not to race-walk any of the runnable canyon sections, and at one stage was reported as third woman almost three hours behind Jackson. A controlled climb up Mingus Mountain on Wednesday afternoon and a steady descent into Jerome closed the gap to under two hours, and a clean final night through Sedona delivered her to the finish in 64:32:08, third woman and inside the women's all-time top five.
Behind the podium, Heidi Strickler held fourth in 67:11:42 to defend her 2024 placing, and Sally McRae moved up to fifth on Wednesday evening with the steadiest closing 60-mile split in the women's top ten. The first male non-podium runner, Cody Lind, finished sixth overall in 66:21:14, meaning the women filled three of the top six finishing places at the race for the first time since Cocodona began in 2021.
Race director Jamil Coury said the women's depth was now the defining feature of the event. "What Rachel did at the front was historic, but having Heather and Courtney chase in like they did, with Heidi and Sally only a few hours back, gives us a women's race we have not had at this distance before," Coury told reporters at the finish line. "We are going to spend the next twelve months thinking about how we shape the field for 2027 because what happened this week resets every assumption we held about how 250 miles is run."