This past weekend was the first running in 2021 of the Bolton Uphill Test. This 1.4 mile sufferfest is a lot of elevation: plenty of aerobic, muscular, and mental challenge.
In lieu of a blog post recap, I realized it might just sum things up better to share the email I sent to the team after the test. It’s a good summary of how to view/interpret the testing archive data, who nailed some big PR efforts, and more!
The standing rule: breaking a course record = pint of Ben and Jerry’s
Hey all,
That was a seriously massive day. Massive in the amount of people, massive in the numbers of PR times achieved, and massive in the course record drop by Rose. I am attaching the archive below. This is the test we have the MOST data from, and it is organized in a few interesting ways for you to analyze:
Tab 1) By time
This is the overall record, nothing fancy. Every time that has run by every person, every time they have done it, in order by race time. We have data going back till around 2013, when some of you were probably in like 1st grade.
Fun to note…the women’s record in 2015 was 19:23 (Amy Bruce) and the men’s record was 14:35 (Henry Harmeyer). OH HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED.
Tab 2) By athlete
This one is super interesting. Everyone who has done the test is listed, and the test dates are organized left-to-right. For each person, you can scroll left and see their times over the years. For those that just did the test for the first time today, your times are added at the bottom.
With the exception of weird weather days (sometimes there’s snow on the course, or it’s like 20 degrees and hail) it is really nice to see a lot of people getting faster and faster as they do the test more and keep training.
Tabs 3+) By date
This is where you can see the times from individual race days. I’ve started doing averages which is a little bit unfair because sometimes we just don’t have too many people. But to have a BIG day like this and see a men’s average of 15:46 and a women’s average of 17:39 (remember, the old RECORD was in the 19s) is really really strong.
Overall Thoughts
If you haven’t gathered by now, I think you all killed it. We’ve got an incredibly strong team, both HS and Collegiate, and you can all really push each other in a number of workouts. Some of you might really excel at this test, and struggle in something like the strength or DP test. Others might have completely flipped places with a teammate in the DP test and running test. Keep striving to work on your weaknesses by training hard with your teammates who may have a different skillset, and offer to lend YOUR skillset to help work with others on certain days.
Going forward, I think (but have not confirmed w Perry) that it would be good to do the Honey Hollow test one more time this summer, to see if we can improve there. We often then do Bolton once more to cap off the summer, usually 2 weeks after the conclusion of Mountain Camp to check that we have recovered from camp and gained some new fitness benefits.
PR PERFORMANCES (for those that have done the test before)
Anders Linseisen 17:30 -> 16:33
Emma Page 18:33 -> 17:54
Taylor Carlson 16:25 -> 15:01
Rose Clayton 16:56 -> 14:49
Joey Del Toro 17:32 -> 16:22
Virginia Cobb 20:15 -> 18:30
Coach Sara! 19:13 -> 18:27
Charles Martell 14:45 -> 14:12
