Training camp in Craftsbury
A long weekend with the UVM team in Craftsbury – a double threshold day, team dinner, and peak Vermont fall colors.
Back in Vermont, school’s been running for four or five weeks again – and then it was off to Craftsbury for a long-weekend training camp with the team.
The team
Our team at the University of Vermont is seven guys and eight girls. Our coach is Patrick Weaver, who’s coached Ben Ogden among others, plus our assistant coach Jakob Volz. I’m the oldest in the group – and probably the most experienced when it comes to training volume.
How it went
Monday through Thursday was normal school, then Friday was fall recess. We drove up to Craftsbury early Friday morning, got a run in on the way, and did a rollerski session with sprints in the afternoon.
Saturday was the core of the camp: a double threshold day. In the morning, 50 minutes of zone 3 classic rollerskiing straight through – about 20 km. Then a short nap to refuel, and at 3pm the second part: skating, 10 × 3 minutes at zone 3 with one minute of rest between. Team dinner together in the evening.
Sunday brought one more three-hour session – roughly an hour and a half of trail running, an hour and a half of rollerskiing – before heading back to Burlington. For me, that was followed by an easy two-hour session that evening to round the day out to five hours total.
Home-course advantage for NCAAs
One thing made this weekend extra special: Craftsbury is hosting the 2026/27 NCAA Championships in cross-country skiing from March 10–13 – our home championship. We’ve been up here for training quite a few times now, and I raced on these exact trails twice last year myself, so that should give us a bit of an edge as a team once winter gets serious. And the atmosphere is going to be great: for bigger races, every team brings speakers out to the course and it turns into a bit of a party. Even at last year’s Eastern Americans here, it was honestly impressive how well the Nordic ski community pulls together and just has a good time. I’m hoping for a big crowd at the start line in March.
Takeaway
The focus was clearly on volume – and on the Vermont fall colors, which are just unbeatable right now. No big race, no highlight moment, just a solid training week with the team. And weekends like this are exactly what will hopefully make the difference once winter rolls around.
