The magazine Running Times has a list of running camps on their Web site and in a spring issue of the monthly.
Craftsbury Web site

Does a week spent indulging your favorite pastime sound like too much of a good thing? Does it conjure images of running morning, noon and night, punctuated by meals of PowerBars and Gatorade?

Think again, at least with regard to Craftsbury Running Camp in northern Vermont, where I've coached the past two summers. At Craftsbury, running is certainly the primary theme, but the variations are what make the place sing.

"It's a running camp," Coach Randy Accetta regularly admonishes his charges in a good-natured whine. "We're supposed to run."

But swimming, hiking, bicycling, and sculling are just a few of the scheduled activities that round out the week-long program. Discussions, lectures, and videotape sessions explore training theories, methods, and the history of the sport.

New campers, many running fewer than 25 miles per week, are generally surprised that they have little trouble keeping up with the running activities, which include hill training, an interval session on the track, and a spectacular ten-mile long run along a mountain ridge overlooking the pristine Vermont countryside. But returning campers--more than half the group at masters week--know better.

"I do as much as I want to do," says Jules (71), a ten-year Craftsbury veteran and skin-deep curmudgeon. "At this point, they should pay me to be here."

But, of course, they don't, and Jules spends at least two weeks every summer enjoying everything that is Craftsbury.

Primary on the list, Jules would agree, is the camaraderie among the campers. It's corny, but a week sweating through daily runs, eating in a dining hall, and sleeping in dormitory rooms will do wonders to foster bonding. Add that runners, granted sometimes obsessive, are some of the most grounded people we know, and the ingredients for a utopian running village establish an enviable social millieu.

"Expanding personal boundaries is a big part of camp," says camp director Greg Wenneborg as part of his opening lecture. "Especially for first-timers, it's a stretch to sign up for a running camp."

Accommodations vary from shared dorm rooms to single rooms with private baths to private lakeside cabins. And the food: I had bragged to Michael, a pal from Southern Maryland, that he would sign up for the running but return for the food. After a week of hearty, nutritious meat and vegetarian fare, Michael--at least a couple of pounds heavier despite the abundance of exercise-- agreed.

"And that doesn't even include the trip to Ben & Jerry's," Michael said, referring to a midweek day trip to picturesque Stowe and Vermont's favorite ice cream factory. Even the day- long Endurathon, an annual highlight combining biking, hiking, running--and culminating with a dip in a mountain lake--burned more calories than some campers took in.

But it's not all fun and games at Craftsbury. Greg and Randy, running's answer to Click and Clack, deliver informative lectures on short and long-term training, goal setting, and the Zen of running and racing. A sometimes topical, generally irreverent "Crossfire" addresses issues ranging from walking in the marathon to the benefits of cross-training.

The week's final exam was the Craftsbury 5K. The race starts with two loops around one of the prettiest town commons in New England and runs past red barns and white churches on dirt roads. Scenic and enjoyable, yes, but serious business for many of the campers, who took the opportunity to test theories of pacing, negative splits, and running through the tape.

And for Peggy, a shy, fifty-something, relatively inexperienced runner, the race meant a breakthrough. "I ran every step of the way," she announced emotionally to her new friends at the finish. "I've never done that before."

Thirty-five runners, from as far away as Oregon, Florida, Arizona, and Canada, began the week together with nothing more in common than a love for running. To a non-runner, an unlikely basis upon which to establish real friendships, much less have an enjoyable vacation. But that's part of what being at Craftsbury is about.

Campers leave behind--some reluctantly--jobs, families, and routine to spend a week immersed in a world of running with strangers in the Vermont woods. Some come with goals, many with apprehensions. But by the time they leave Craftsbury, they have expanded their worlds--stretched, as the camp director had said-- at least a bit.