Vo2 max
-
hi, I want to ask about the VO2 max values. I’ve had the watch since April of this year. I switched from Garmin. Last year, in my best form, running at a pace of 6.50, heart rate of 145, Garmin gave me an estimate of VO2 max of 49. Now I’m in much better shape, with a pace of 6.30, average heart rate of about 138-140, and my VO2 max is 45. At the end of April, I also took a threshold test with the watch, where I got a pace of 4.56, average heart rate of 176, which was also the estimated lactate threshold. I set it to the beginning of zone 5. I run, mostly zone 2, but also tempo runs and interval training. Today I completed a 2 km warm-up training, then 4x4 minutes at a pace of about 4.34-4.37. I even set a record for 1 km. I’m attaching photos. then cool down 3km I don’t understand why my vo2 max doesn’t go up at all, because I’m in the best shape right now. Can anyone give me advice on how to increase it? I’ve already thought about cutting the warm up and cool down.
Thank you for your knowledge. It’s frustrating when I can actually see that I’ve improved and it doesn’t change at all. It’s clear that if I go trail running it will go down, but I don’t understand the rest. -
@Miroslava said in Vo2 max:
It’s frustrating when I can actually see that I’ve improved and it doesn’t change at all.
VO2Max changes very little once you’ve passed the large gains going from an inactive person to a regularly training person, so my advice would be to forget that specific data point - which anyway can only be roughly estimated by our watches. Instead focus on the real data, i.e. your perceived effort plus actual Heart Rate at different paces over distance and time.
As for Company estimates… Garmin have always grossly overestimated my VO2Max. Since I began running at the age of 53 until today at 65 they regularly put it at 49, 50, 51 ml/kg/min which gives pure fantasy running times over all distances (meaning much, much too fast). Suunto also overestimates it as being around 44 to 45 which, again, predicts racing times I never will reach. Coros however came closer with their 39, 40 to 41 estimates which tallies better with a Cooper Test I did (run 12 minutes at controlled max pace) which gave 42. Still, those figures are all estimates, and with little real world application.
If you would like a better insight as how to train (paces for different goals) use a lookup table. Plug in your best effort for a known distance and adopt however you feel. Example:
https://www.finalsurge.com/tinman-calculator
Taking myself as an example: A couple of years ago I did 4:11 as a personal best for 1 kilometres. Putting that in at the calculator they say run at 6:30-6:57/Km for an Easy pace on flat ground. Jupp, that is what I normally do for the long aerobic sessions. They say do 4:29-4:34 for VO2Max pace. That aligns with the vVO2Max (Velocity at VO2Max) of ca 4:30 I found some years ago [Run at a controlled max pace for 6 minutes - the last 2 will feel like you are dying; the average pace over the 6 minutes is your vVO2Max].
The “Equivalent Race Times” of the table gets progressively less accurate with such a short distance entry as 1 km - they predict 01:49:47 for a Half Marathon while I did ca 02:00:00 a few years ago. But that is the nature of generalisations and different distances. If I plug in that real world race time the Easy pace is stated as 07:04-07:33! Very, slow for a flat ground run. I would hardly reach 70% of my Max HR there…
