This guide is written for parents, by people who've worked with thousands of families navigating these decisions over 15 years. It's not designed to point you toward a particular camp — including ours. It's designed to give you a framework for evaluating any program, so you can make the decision that fits your family with clarity rather than anxiety.

This article compares the two categories honestly, covering what each offers, what each costs, and how to decide which fits your runner's needs right now.

The appeal is clear: train at elevation, come home faster. But the physiology is more nuanced than the marketing. This article explains what altitude training actually does, what the research says about who benefits, how long it takes, and how to evaluate altitude camp options based on science rather than claims.

This framework is designed to help you evaluate any running camp systematically. We run camps too — international programs in Switzerland and Italy — but the criteria below apply equally to a local cross-country retreat in Ohio and a two-week altitude program in the Alps. The goal is an informed decision, not a specific one.