Just a number man, 80% of which is genetic anyway. Work on increasing your lactate threshold and you will likely be "faster" than someone with a VO2 max of 60. Many of my roadie and tri friends tested all on the same day (20 people). We ranged from 45 (female age 46) to 79 (me, male 37). Most were in the 60's with one female at 72. For what it is worth ...

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Fatigue is biochemical, not biomechanical.
- Andrew Coggan, PhD

I'm certainly no expert on this, but I believe VO2max is mostly genetic. One can perhaps increase it slightly through training, but for the most part you are stuck with what you have. Read "Lore of Running" for amazing amounts of detail on this...

Also keep in mind that that number you were given was likely in mL per min per kilo, right? If you are 10kilos overweight that will affect that number slightly. But yeah, genetics play a huge role in that number. I am at 45, similar to you, and have only had marginal increases over the years. Turns out I have small lungs (volume wise) compared to the average non-smoking female of similar age. But my heart is far more efficient than most extremely fit men (stroke volume is one aspect of cardiac fitness for example), so my body makes up for the small lung volume in other ways.

AP

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"How bad could it be?" - SimpleS

"What does it tell me about my fitness?"
From my exercise phys class notes...

V02 is a measure of oxygen consumption. Oxygen consumption is how much oxygen you can take out of your blood per minute - a hemoglobin molecule has four Fe's on it and an 02 attaches to each of those - then the hemoglobins travel to your cells, which extract the oxygen and use it in the citric acid cycle (energy-producing reactions, they make ATP - your body's usable 'energy currency.')

V02 is measured in mL/min or L/min. To compare values across athletes, you need to divide that value by your body weight, and the unit will be mL/min/kg. So, your v02 max isn't "48.1" it is 48.1 mL/min/kg. Units are important!

How hard you're working influences your oxygen consumption. At rest, you're not pulling a ton of oxygen out of your blood. Start sprinting, you are.

Say you have two athletes whose vo2 max are measured to be 3000 ml/min. One is a football player, lets say he weighs 100kg. The other is a runner, lets say she weighs 50 kg. You get:
football player = 3000 ml/min / 100kg = 30 ml/kg/min
runner = 3000 ml/min / 50kg = 60 ml/kg/min
Assume their resting oxygen consumption is 3.5 ml/min/kg. Suppose you take 1 kg muscle out of each of their bodies. Both of those pieces of muscle will use 3.5 ml of oxygen a minute. Now, suppose that we have them each go "run" at 5 mph. Each kg of body weight for both of them will consume 30 mL o2 a minute - their oxygen consumption per kg body weight is the SAME. However, the football player's max vo2 is 30 ml/kg/min, so he is working at his max and won't be able to run for very long. The runner, working at half her v02 max, will probably be chomping at the bit to go faster.

World-class marathoners run ~4:50/mile, which takes a vo2 max of roughly 70ml/kg/min.

Resting oxygen consumption is about the same for everyone, the difference is what your vo2 max is. Training increases your v02 max - or, your ability to extract oxygen from your blood and use it to produce energy.

You can use oxygen consumption data to compute calories: every 1L of oxygen used = 5 calories.

I don't know if that answered your question or not, now that I write it, but anyway...

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Sounds like that while it has a lot of validity, I should take it with a grain of salt. I just want to train my way to Kona, man!

Thanks for the feedback!!!

http://www.TriHive.com

48? I want to race you, but I'm afraid I may hurt you. :-)

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I just want to train my way to Kona, man!



desire is worth more than numbers ever are.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Bottomfeeder,

You are totally brutal. I'm going to listen to tigerchick and ignor that crap. Maybe I'll double check and make sure it doesn't say 84 instead of 48.

Alex M.

http://www.TriHive.com

Did you get out of breath just typing that. :-)

Actually I would ignore the number and just fucking train if I were you. Then silk screen "48 mL O2/s/kg" on your speedo and blow your buddies away at the races.

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Alex,

As a double check for your VO2 max test, it is interesting to run an open 10K time through a Daniels' calculator.
Doing so indicates that with a VO2 max of 48.1 one might expect to run a 42:45 10K. The race time implies reasonable race conditions,
appropriate training, average running economy, rested condition, etc.. Actual performance in running or biking trumps lab tests for most
of us as its how fast you actually go that matters most.

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Are you sure that Daniels makes the mistake of equating VO2Max to a measure of running economy? I don't think so...

Paulo's right, VDOT is related to, not equal to, VO2Max

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"...it should be swim, bike, run, cage fight." - el fuser
"I noticed that I am in your sig line! Wow! That's s first for me. Thanks." - Fleck

Fitness? Anyone who is doing Olympic distance triathlons is in the 99th percentile. IOW, 99% of the population is less fit than you are. Can you improve? Of course you can. Can you get faster without increasing your VO2 max? Sure. So much of what we do is technique related. Increase your efficiency and you increase your speed. Increase your metabolic efficiency by LSD training and you decrease your time in endurance events.

Hard interval training will increase your VO2 in pure numbers (ability to process oxygen) and losing weight will DRAMATICALLY increase your VO2 max which is a ratio of oxygen used per kilo of body weight.

I weigh 175 lbs, or 79.5 Kg and can process appoximately 4.5L/O2/min. So my VO2 is 56.6. This winter after knee surgery, I reached 189 lbs, making my VO2 52.4 (theoretically, because I was also out of shape at the time so it was surely even lower) If I reach my goal weight of 165 for my A race, my VO2 should increase to 60.0. Back in my collegiate days, at 152, it would have been 65.1

So as you can see, a drop of 14 lbs could get your VO2 up to around 54.

All that said, VO2 max is just a number. I don't have access to the actual stats, but I remember hearing that both Frank Shorter and Steve Prefontaine had ridiculously low VO2 numbers for what they accomplished. Don't let a set of numbers limit your ambitions. Train hard, eat right, taper well and kick ass.

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Cousin Elwood - Team Over-the-hill Racing
Brought to you by the good folks at Metamucil and Geritol...

Just want to be sure, but you had a max vo2 test done, not a sub-max test right?

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>if you can't win, make the guy ahead of you break the record

Vo2 max is about 50% genetically determined. it's also the rate limiting mechanism in endurance exercise and although people say you can make up for a poor VO2max with good efficiency or a high lactate threshold, you can only exercise at certain percentages of VO2max.

For e.g., most trained cyclists can exercise maximally for ~1-hr at up to 90% VO2max, and the range (for what they can sustain of VO2max) is quite small. Therefore if someone was able to exercise maximally for 1hr at 90%Vo2max and race against someone who could 'only' sustain say 85% of VO2max, but their VO2max was significantly higher it wouldn't make any difference how much more of a % the other person could sustain, as 90% of not a lot just isn't a lot.

The female at 72 mL/kg/min was she a world class athlete?

ric

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http://www.cyclecoach.com

dalbright,

I'm pretty sure it's V02 max that I had done. On my sheet it states one line one, "V02 (ml 02/kg/min)" and then, under the category "Peak" it has the 48.1.

Thanks for all of the encouragement.

What I don't get is I know I'm not at my best fitness right now. I'm sure when I peak in October I'd have a better performance on the test. Assuming the test is genetic, shouldn't the numbers stay relatively the same (or in the ball park)? So, I think the number would rise significantly if I can push through the test further.

Alex M.

http://www.TriHive.com

My first thought when I read the OP was "finally someone posts an accurate test on ST".

"I'm pretty sure it's V02 max that I had done. On my sheet it states one line one, "V02 (ml 02/kg/min)" and then, under the category "Peak" it has the 48.1."

VO2max and VO2peak are two different measurements. Peak applies to type of exercise, max is the highest for the all types.

For example, if you did a different test for the swim, bike, and run, you would have three different peak values, with one being a "true" max as well (which depending on the athlete usually means the run)

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http://www.reathcon.com

Athletes with poor running economy will run slower than a lab VO2 max test might imply and runners with
superb running economy will run faster than their VO2 max test would imply. Frank Shorter is a great example of an
athlete with a non Olympian VO2 max but great economy and lactate threshold. I hope that you agree
with this. If not, you have much to learn and should probably not be charging a fee to coach.

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Dang...you have some talented friends (not to mention yourself). Hope I don't run into any of them in a race : ).

Some yes (OH female state road race champ, 4th in the U.S.), some no (the VO2 max of 45). All kinds, really!

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____________________________________
Fatigue is biochemical, not biomechanical.
- Andrew Coggan, PhD

I suggest that you go over the sentence I highlighted in bold and tell me what did you get wrong. That of course, besides your initial post.

Paulo,

You apear to be mixing up the concept of VDOT, the VO2 max estimate derived from race times and VO2 max, the actual maximal oxygen used per kilogram of body mass per minute measured pretty directly in a lab.

I completely agree that running economy has absolutely no affect on VO2 max!!!! VDOT on the other hand is greatly influenced by running economy. If you would like, I'll try to have Dr. Daniels email you to explain or you could read page 46 of Daniels' Running Formula second edition. You did mention that you have this text to Andy C. the other day. I understand that English is not your first language but this is rather simple stuff.

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Guess why I've been quoting your posts. Nice backtracking. Maybe I'll print this and show it to Dr. Daniels next week. Good timing, thanks.

And here's some friendly advice: If you try to be patronizing, at least get things right at first.