In cycle racing, which she took up as cross training outside the skating season, Heiden won both the United States National Road Race Championships and the Road World Championship in 1980. After the Olympics, while a student at the University of Vermont (UVM), she was the NCAA national championship in cross-country skiing in 1983 and an All-American in the same sport, as a walk on in her first year of the sport. In that same year she became the US National Champion in one of the skiing distance events. She graduated from the university in 1983 and was inducted into the UVM Athletic Hall of Fame in 1993. She has also been inducted in the Speed Skating Hall of Fame.