Challenge
15
-
18
6,678 Feet
Trail, Flat, Track
70-130 km
63oF - 83oF
Please Join Us!
The mission of Sparks challenge camps is to intensively train athletes in key areas of athletic development while exploring their personal relationship with performance.
Prices rise as spots fill - register early for the best rate! We offer travel insurance with cancel-for-any-reason coverage up to 2 days before camp.
Run, Cook, & Grow in the Italian Alps
At Sparks, we know that breakthrough performances happen when you train smart, not just hard. This two-week program takes you to Italy's premier alpine training environments, where you'll experience the altitude adaptation and race-pace application methods that European distance runners use to dominate international competition.
You'll begin at 6675 feet in Sestriere, training on the same high-altitude routes and newly resurfaced track that elite athletes use for championship preparation. Personalized gait analysis reveals exactly which movement patterns are limiting your efficiency, while strength evaluations identify the physical imbalances that altitude training will expose. Your nutrition planning gets tailored to how your body responds to training stress at elevation.
Week two brings you to Turin at near sea-level, where your altitude-adapted physiology meets race-pace demands. You'll alternate between the upgraded Stadio Primo Nebiolo and scenic city routes, testing your developed fitness against competitive pacing and tactics. Small-group cooking workshops with a sports dietitian teach you to prepare recovery meals matched to your training load—turning nutrition theory into practical daily skills.
The program centers on structured reflection sessions that develop the self-coaching ability most runners spend years trying to build. Working with other committed athletes, you'll learn to process training stress constructively, refine your mental approach to challenging moments, and create accountability systems around your individual patterns.
With a 1:4 staff-to-athlete ratio, you receive continuous feedback connecting your physiological adaptations to technique improvements. You'll leave Italy with measurably improved running economy from altitude training, a personalized injury prevention protocol, practical fueling strategies, and the analytical skills to continue optimizing your performance using objective feedback rather than guesswork alone.
Hear More About the Sparks Athlete Experience
Go To Pursue Self-Mastery
Go For The Group
Go For The Environment
Our challenge two week programs offer athletes a chance to improve their athletic self-awareness so they may better pursue performance.
First: you should aspire to improve your perspective and reflection as an athlete through running.
Second: you need the desire to independently integrate new ideas into your training to enhance physical and mental performance.
Finally: you seek to improve on the execution of your current training through strength and fitness.
Step 1: Initial Application
Submit your registration and pay the $895 deposit; we will accept the deposit to process your application and hold your place. If you are not offered a place, the full deposit is refundable.
Step 2: Written Application
This program informs athletes' approach to running performance by enabling the self awareness to guide independent development. Athletes should seek a deeper relationship with running, possess a drive to learn and improve on all aspects of performance, and have an adventurous spirit.
The Italiian Running Challenge Written Application is comprised of these response prompts:
- What about this program appeals to you?
- Evaluate yourself as a running athlete - what are your strengths and weaknesses, and how will this program help you grow?
- Evaluate yourself as a teammate. Discuss the ways you are a supportive teammate and explain how you'd like to grow.
- What running injuries have occurred in your running career?
- Please provide your average training volume (minutes or miles) and if available, a link to your performance bio (milesplit/athletic.net account) as well as your strava account.
- What about this program appeals to you?
The prompts will be submitted on your Sparks user dashboard and are due within 14 days of initial application.
Step 3: Zoom Interview
You will schedule your interview from your Sparks user dashboard after you submit your written application. During the interview we will talk about the program, your written application, and how the opportunity aligns with your experience, values, and goals.
Step 4: Decision
Upon acceptance full payment is due by March 1. Full payment is due within 14 days for applications received after March 1.
Admissions occurs on a rolling basis. Timeline for decisions is within a week of the interview; if your timeline is shorter, we can work with you. Written applications must be submitted within 14 days of initial application, and interviews must be scheduled within 30 days of initial application.
Photo Gallery
At A Glance
Excellent Staff at Low Ratios
Thoughtful Admissions
High Standards of Behavior
Reading and Writing at Camp
Healthy Hospitality
The Reflective Cycle
Camp Focuses
Goal Setting
Injury Prevention
Recovery
Nutrition
What goes into a Sparks Camp?
You get more out of a Sparks camp because we put more into a Sparks camp*
*These numbers are an approximation across all of our camps.
†Housing includes meeting and activity space for the camp during the day as well.
FAQ
How can I prepare to get the most out of camp?
At Sparks, we train approach and mindset. So, you need to consider how you'd like to improve in those regards to get the most out of camp.
After the admissions process is complete but prior to camp, campers are asked to do some journaling on their approach to performance and their goals for camp.
After we complete the arrival portion of our first, campers entry-interview with camp staff on their goals such that everyone is on the same page as per impact for camp.
On the physiological side, we expect to be able to run the splits in your milesplit profile when you show up. That said, camp is about challenging yourself to take greater control of your relationship with performance - and doing so may enable you to perform beyond those splits at camp.
How do I know this is going to make me a better runner?
We believe the answer to this question resides in whether you believe an improved approach and mindset towards running and performance in general is going to make you a better runner.
We provide world-class quality facilities, staff, food, venues, and structure to enable you to explore how you pursue running performance from an informed and well-resourced perspective. Our admissions process is geared to admit thoughtful, emotionally mature athletes who have the ability to utilize those qualities in growing their awareness of performance.
Once you possess a greater awareness of your performance, what you choose to do with it will determine your improvement.
What level of experience is necessary for this program?
We band athletes into smaller groups by ability per their applications.
Ability levels in the cohort as a whole will differ - but that is why we maintain a low staff to student ratio. What matters is not your ability relative to the others in the group, but rather your desire to accurately evaluate your performance and plan to improve.
As a result, while this camp requires a higher level of maturity and thoughtfulness.
Do you offer scholarships or discounts?
Our prices increase as spots fill. The earlier you register, the better the price you’ll get. We also offer travel insurance that provides "cancel for any reason" coverage until 2 days prior to camp.
Regarding Scholarships:
Please see this link to our NCAA Compliance webpage.
Tell me more about admissions - how selective is it?
Our admissions process is one of the most thoughtful in the running camp industry and we evaluate each athlete on a case by case basis.
While we look speed and experience, we are also very interested in your motivation and passion for running. At our camps, the drive to improve leads to increased maturity and thoughtfulness - which leads to performance.
We also consider your ability to live, train, and support others in a community committed to utilizing challenge for personal growth. Sparks camps are unlike traditional training camps in that progress in self-awareness per your relationship with performance is as important as acute technical progress. Ideal candidates will complete the program with gains in both self-awareness and corresponding ability to improve long after camp ends.
Switzerland is designed for athletes who seek to better define their relationship with performance. You do not have to be a high performer relative to others, but you should be interested in how you might define peak performance for yourself. To be clear: we are not a performance "boot camp" whereby students are pushed beyond themselves so much as an opportunity for students to unlock the mechanisms that contribute to performance within themselves in a community committed to doing the same in a thoughtful, intelligent manner.
We welcome your questions either via phone or in the chat box in the right hand corner.
What differentiates Sparks camps and this program specifically?
When asked to perform, many athletes ask themselves why they're there in the first place. While we seek to help them answer that question, that also plays into a defining greater self-awareness.
Our mission is to challenge young adults to grow courageously as people - and as athletes. To support that mission, we're the only teen sport travel adventure camp with a full-time staff that has academic and professional backgrounds in experiential education - program design is thoughtfully crafted and executed as a result. We also have a summer operations staff (many are returners that teach during the school year) who buy into the idea of personal growth at camp not just for campers - but for themselves as well.
The overall result of these ingredients is a culture sincerely committed to the power of sport as a personally transformative experience built on vulnerability, thoughtfulness, responsibility, and initiative. These qualities along with our values of growth, kaizen, and endurance dictate the culture our camp community forms around. Our focus is on utilizing sport to create the self-awareness necessary to master one's relationship with performance.
Switzerland is a perfect venue insofar as beauty, logistics, safety, and ability to provide a high-end experience for runners. We know the venue having run rowing camps there for a number of years.
How big is the program?
Sparks multi-week cohorts are typically between 12 and 20 athletes. Coaching and operations staff ratios are set at 1:6, making overall staff to student ratio 1:3 - however, sometimes it is even lower.
Of chief importance to us is the quality of our cohorts - which we believe is a product of admissions, staffing, and group size to facilitate activities (eg. bands of runners at different speeds) as well as friendships that last long after camp ends.
We seek the highest international-quality level in coaching staff and our senior operations staff is made up of runners turned educators with a number of years of prior experience in our camp system; many hold graduate degrees in education.
What can you tell me about housing and supervision at camp?
Campers lodge in a backpackers immediately adjacent to the lake and take meals across the street at a rowing club with a private dock that be used for recovery.
At Sparks camps, we have two staffs: a coaching staff and an operations staff. Our operations staff is responsible for the experiential education and pastoral care at camp. In Switzerland, we seek a 1:3 overall staff to student ratio.
Given the selectivity of our admissions process, we experience relatively few behavioral issues given the emphasis we put on maturity, mental preparation, and engagement of the camp's mission. The Program Director lives amongst the student athletes, and has oversight 24 hours a day.
Tell me about safety at Sparks
We employ safety and risk management practices from the adventure education industry, where some risk is inherent but must be quantified insofar as educational value. These practices are initially employed in program design and we work hard to train operations staff to seek to maintain an awareness of specific risks at all times. We retain a risk management advisor and an MD on call during the summer. No outdoors programming can guarantee safety, however professional management of risk is key to the art of providing consistently excellent experiential education programming.
How do you handle travel to/from the camp?
Groups arrive and depart out of Zürich International. We seek to help families connect who would like their students to travel together and Swiss Air flies nonstop from United hub locations.
Families fill out a travel form that enables our staff to make sure your camper arrives and departs camp safely. Our Program Director (already on the ground in Switzerland as students depart) tracks student travel into Zürich, where they are picked up from the airport and transported together by train to Lucerne. Our regional directors are also on standby during travel days to handle any issue that may arise.
In the case you will arrive in Switzerland as a family and drop your camper off, we will meet at the Lucerne train station.
The journey itself is part of the experience and we design travel to our camps to invite athletes to take a personal journey with sport at its center.
If you have questions, we're happy to answer them in the box in the lower right side, or you can schedule a call with us.
I have questions before I apply. Is it possible to speak with someone?
Certainly - we completely understand your need to connect about this commitment!
We just ask you schedule a call with us (click here) given we're a very small office.
Where are camp forms found?
Camp forms are issued at least six weeks prior to camp on our site via your dashboard.
What is the cancellation/refund policy?
Camp purchases are fully refundable minus transaction fees until March 1 for summer camps.
- We strongly recommend you purchase travel protection with cancel for any reason coverage.
- We offer these plans from Travel Insured International during the check-out process for our four and five day camps and during final balance payment for deposit-based multi-week camps.
- Learn more about travel protection here
- If you withdraw after the above dates, there are no refunds for any reason whatsoever (including, but not limited to: voluntary withdraw, illness or injury, summer school, security concerns or other reasons).
- If your camper leaves camp after it starts, there are no refunds for any reason whatsoever, including but not limited to: voluntary withdrawal, illness or injury, dismissal by Sparks (due to discipline, behavior, lack of fitness or motivation, etc.) security concerns, or any other reason. Any costs incurred by Sparks as a result of an early departure are the sole responsibility of the parents.
- In the unlikely case a camp does not proceed, we'll work to notify you by March 1. You'll be offered a different program or a refund. In some cases, we may extend the 'go, no-go' date. We recommend buying your flight after March 1 or later, if we advise.