What is the lowest vo2 max you have ever seen in a highly trained individual?

Give That Man A Hand wrote:

MrRay wrote:

100M 14.5

200M 31.7

400M 66.5

800M 2:28

1600M 5:30

5000M 19:50

10000M 42:02

13.1 1:39

26.2 3:35

Wow!...those are very impressive times, especially the 1600, for man with a VO2max of only 51! There are dudes I know that can't run those times with a 60 VO2max!

You be da man! ?

Wouldn’t having a 60vo2 make all of those times relatively effortless? I thought you needed to train very hard to achieve a vo2 anywhere near the 60 ml/kg range!

Did you ever do a Vo2max test in your AW days?

This field is useless wrote:

How does that match up to your garmin estimated vo2max?

I’d be interested to know how the test and garmin reading match up as well. My garmin readings vary between 52 and 54 and I’m currently running similar times.

MrRay wrote:

Give That Man A Hand wrote:

Wow!...those are very impressive times, especially the 1600, for man with a VO2max of only 51! There are dudes I know that can't run those times with a 60 VO2max!

You be da man! ?

Wouldn’t having a 60vo2 make all of those times relatively effortless? I thought you needed to train very hard to achieve a vo2 anywhere near the 60 ml/kg range!

I'm pretty sure I have a VO2 over 60. But these times are effortless. Like these are pretty much my workout paces for training rn.

MrDave wrote:

This field is useless wrote:

How does that match up to your garmin estimated vo2max?

I’d be interested to know how the test and garmin reading match up as well. My garmin readings vary between 52 and 54 and I’m currently running similar times.

I think heart rate watches are a load of bull personally, I have a garmin wrist wtach and it measures my heart rate during runs and gives me a vo2 max reading based on my heart rate at a certain pace. It is pretty accurate with picking up te paces but not so accurate when traking my heart rate. I was doing a tempo run at 6:40 pace a couple of weeks back and my vo2 max score at the end of the run was something like 67 because it measured my heart rate in the low 120s during the run (when in reality I would have had at least a 165-175 HR).

So yeah, from my experience.. it isn’t perfectly accurate. You’re better off predicting your max from a race.

JamesTheAmateur wrote:

MrRay wrote:

100M 14.5

200M 31.7

400M 66.5

800M 2:28

1600M 5:30

5000M 19:50

10000M 42:02

13.1 1:39

26.2 3:35

This will sound dickish and I don't mean it to be, but I'm surprised these are your times when you've been running for 7 years. I'm 27, 5'6", 160 lbs (yeah, I'm a fatty, working on it), and returned to running in January after 10 years off. I've run ~30 MPW this year.

I've run these times so far this year:

1500m: 5:34 (August)

5000m: 21:05 (August)

10k: 46:44 (my last 10k had a sign pointing the wrong way so I ran off solo uphill and died). (October)

I have a mile, 5k, and 10k race left this year and expect a 5:35, 20:30, and 42:30, respectively. I have to wonder if you're training incorrectly because it seems like you should be a lot faster

This will sound dickish as well but when I returned to running after 13 years off. I'm suprised these are your times after 11 months when In 9 months off 15mpw, I ran theses times

1500m: 4:53

5000m: 18:17

10k: 38:14

I too have to wonder if you are training incorrectly because it seems like you should be a lot faster.

Another example which might help you get your head around this amazing undiscovered and strange happening:

Hi my name is Daniel Komen. This will sound dickish but I'm suprised these are all three of your times when you have been running 60mpw for 7 years, 30mpw for 11 months and 15mpw for 9 months. When I was 30 after an 8 year break and running 0mpw and getting fat and drunk, I had to be an official starter for a 5k race in USA. I fired the gun and decided to run in my sweats and won the race in 16:01

5k:16:01

I have to wonder if all of you are training incorrectly as you all should be much faster.

Is that a true story with Komen or are you giving us the business? ?

Not many VO2 obsessed Africans on that list. Doesn’t that tell you something about VO2 testing?

As far as I'm aware, that's a true story.

Also, Komenesque, I genuinely didn't mean to come across as a dick. That wasn't a humble brag since my times aren't anything impressive. It was more to highlight that something seems off with OP's training or body chemistry. Even seven years of pure easy running should have net him quicker times. Again, it sounded like I was crapping on OP when that wasn't my intention. It was simply to express surprise at the relative closeness in times when I'm heavier, eat like crap, have a lower VO2 max (51 by my Garmin), a lower weekly mileage, and a higher resting heart rate. Something isn't adding up

[/quote]Dell Todd, a runner living in Grand Rapids, Mich., showed up at a low-key local 5K one Saturday and was astonished to see Daniel Komen there.

“Komen was the starter,” Todd says. “He actually fired the gun. We all started running. Maybe a quarter-mile down the road he flashed by in his warm-up pants. He had fired the gun and then raced, which is kind of unusual. After being the official starter he was the official winner too. As I recall nobody was close to him. He won by a minute.”[/quote]

Letsrun article on it

Results:

1 Komen, Daniel 16:01

2 Schafer, Antonio Grand RapidsMI 16:41

3 Tumele, Aj Muskegon MI 17:05

4 Alsum, Joel Grand Rapids MI 17:05

Apparently Komen had an argument at the finish as he thought he was sub 16?

JamesTheAmateur, I'm not having a go at you. What I was trying to point out with my post is that there is varying degrees of talent. For every Daniel Komen level talent, there is someone who has no physical ability. To Daniel Komen, a 15 minute 5k runner bashing out 120mpw wouldn't be percieved as talented as Komen could do that after years of no training.

All the training in the world won't get some people to a sub 18 5k while others can do that off no training. I think the old saying goes "you can't turn a mule into a racehorse" even if you invested the whole global income into training it. Some people are racehorses, some people are mules and the majority lie somewhere in between.

JamesTheAmateur wrote:

As far as I'm aware, that's a true story.

Also, Komenesque, I genuinely didn't mean to come across as a dick. That wasn't a humble brag since my times aren't anything impressive. It was more to highlight that something seems off with OP's training or body chemistry. Even seven years of pure easy running should have net him quicker times. Again, it sounded like I was crapping on OP when that wasn't my intention. It was simply to express surprise at the relative closeness in times when I'm heavier, eat like crap, have a lower VO2 max (51 by my Garmin), a lower weekly mileage, and a higher resting heart rate. Something isn't adding up

It just shows that VO2 max isn't the only or even the best predictor of performance. What's your best 100m, 400m times? I bet you have more natural speed than the OP.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that 30m shuttle time and standing broadjump was a better predictor of 5k performance than VO2 max.

Also some people are just more economical than others. Person A may have a VO2 max 10 points higher than person B but is just not as efficient, is more wasteful in their movements. Or maybe they don't clear lactate as well.

VO2 max doesn't measure how your tendons etc. handle loads that are placed on them. Are they spring like, or do they just soak up the energy and diffuse it like a sponge with very little elastic spring return?

JamesTheAmateur wrote:

As far as I'm aware, that's a true story.

Also, Komenesque, I genuinely didn't mean to come across as a dick. That wasn't a humble brag since my times aren't anything impressive. It was more to highlight that something seems off with OP's training or body chemistry. Even seven years of pure easy running should have net him quicker times. Again, it sounded like I was crapping on OP when that wasn't my intention. It was simply to express surprise at the relative closeness in times when I'm heavier, eat like crap, have a lower VO2 max (51 by my Garmin), a lower weekly mileage, and a higher resting heart rate. Something isn't adding up

Sorry, just one more thing to add to this. Firstly performance is a little more complicated than those factors you listed above. What's your muscle fiber composition? What are your testosterone levels? What are your running economy numbers? What is blood volume made up of? What is your tolerance to lactate? Basic speed? Do I really have to keep going?

Vo2max on it's own is the most useless piece of data you can imagine. We know you need a 70 ish + plus to be Elite in male athletics but if Vo2max is so important, why is Lance Armstrong a mediocre runner? It's because he has terrible economy and awful tolerances to lactate when running. World class elites with high Vo2max usually have relatively poor economy while the inverse is true of World class athletes who have low Vo2max scores

The main components of running are:

Vo2max

Running economy

Lactate Threshold

This is why you can take two athletes with identical Vo2max scores and see huge variance in performance between each other. Because a better running economy or LT can make them much faster along with many other less major factors. Don't even bother with Garmin numbers. If you have the same Vo2max as him, how come you are so much slower? The answer is because Vo2max on it's own means nothing. If you lost 7kg over the next two weeks and only tried to maintain fitness, your Vo2max score would still highly inflate.

Vo2max is the most oft quoted physiological nonsense. If you want to pull something credible out it as a mark of fitness, the only number that matters is velocity at Vo2max.

Your comment that velocity at VO2max is what counts is right on. That is a value Daniels invented back in the 1980s. By the way he also tested Ron Clark at 86 VO2max, back in 1968.

Yes, Africans generally don't have access to testing. Not too many new white tests on this list either.

By country the list is pretty balanced.

Hog wrote:

Your comment that velocity at VO2max is what counts is right on. That is a value Daniels invented back in the 1980s. By the way he also tested Ron Clark at 86 VO2max, back in 1968.

Daniels popularised the term vVo2max it but it was discovered in the early 1920's by Archibald Hil and Hartley Lupton but they never named it. Somewhere between them and Daniels, it started to be called critical speed and finally vVo2max by Daniels.

" If you want to pull something credible out it as a mark of fitness...."

TIME and PLACE are more important than either Vo2Max, Running Economy, or Lactate Threshold.....

Train for TIME and PLACE and your physiological variables will follow suite...

Alan

I think that's fairly obvious that time and place are the best markers of performance.

Can I not use evidence of physiology to dispel the Vo2max myth along the way to prove that you cannot wrap up a million different different processes to get a performance. You are not disagreeing with me yet you choose to pick one of the handful of posts on this thread that was trying to argue against taking these things as all there is.

But I will disagree with your last point, psyiological improvements come before you achieve time and place. What you think you trying to do through training and how you approach different events with different demands? You are trying to induce physiological adaptions.

Komenesque wrote:

I want to be like those guys wrote:

Is that a true story with Komen or are you giving us the business? ?

https://running.competitor.com/2014/06/features/what-ever-happened-to-daniel-komen_27486

Dell Todd, a runner living in Grand Rapids, Mich., showed up at a low-key local 5K one Saturday and was astonished to see Daniel Komen there.

“Komen was the starter,” Todd says. “He actually fired the gun. We all started running. Maybe a quarter-mile down the road he flashed by in his warm-up pants. He had fired the gun and then raced, which is kind of unusual. After being the official starter he was the official winner too. As I recall nobody was close to him. He won by a minute.”[/quote]

Letsrun article on it

Results:

1 Komen, Daniel 16:01

2 Schafer, Antonio Grand RapidsMI 16:41

3 Tumele, Aj Muskegon MI 17:05

4 Alsum, Joel Grand Rapids MI 17:05

Apparently Komen had an argument at the finish as he thought he was sub 16?

JamesTheAmateur, I'm not having a go at you. What I was trying to point out with my post is that there is varying degrees of talent. For every Daniel Komen level talent, there is someone who has no physical ability. To Daniel Komen, a 15 minute 5k runner bashing out 120mpw wouldn't be percieved as talented as Komen could do that after years of no training.

All the training in the world won't get some people to a sub 18 5k while others can do that off no training. I think the old saying goes "you can't turn a mule into a racehorse" even if you invested the whole global income into training it. Some people are racehorses, some people are mules and the majority lie somewhere in between.[/quote]

Actually racing Mules are fast and you probably could in fact produce a mule that could compete with racehorses.

Of course you'd have to use an actual racehorse as the mother and try to get a wild donkey or Kiang etc. as the father.

physics defiant wrote:

Komenesque wrote:

https://running.competitor.com/2014/06/features/what-ever-happened-to-daniel-komen_27486

Dell Todd, a runner living in Grand Rapids, Mich., showed up at a low-key local 5K one Saturday and was astonished to see Daniel Komen there.

“Komen was the starter,” Todd says. “He actually fired the gun. We all started running. Maybe a quarter-mile down the road he flashed by in his warm-up pants. He had fired the gun and then raced, which is kind of unusual. After being the official starter he was the official winner too. As I recall nobody was close to him. He won by a minute.”

Letsrun article on it

Results:

1 Komen, Daniel 16:01

2 Schafer, Antonio Grand RapidsMI 16:41

3 Tumele, Aj Muskegon MI 17:05

4 Alsum, Joel Grand Rapids MI 17:05

Apparently Komen had an argument at the finish as he thought he was sub 16?

JamesTheAmateur, I'm not having a go at you. What I was trying to point out with my post is that there is varying degrees of talent. For every Daniel Komen level talent, there is someone who has no physical ability. To Daniel Komen, a 15 minute 5k runner bashing out 120mpw wouldn't be percieved as talented as Komen could do that after years of no training.

All the training in the world won't get some people to a sub 18 5k while others can do that off no training. I think the old saying goes "you can't turn a mule into a racehorse" even if you invested the whole global income into training it. Some people are racehorses, some people are mules and the majority lie somewhere in between.[/quote]

Actually racing Mules are fast and you probably could in fact produce a mule that could compete with racehorses.

Of course you'd have to use an actual racehorse as the mother and try to get a wild donkey or Kiang etc. as the father.[/quote]

Omfg, it's posts like yours which remind why I don't post on letsrun often. Can you guys not just get the point without turning these posts into inane splitting of hairs? I'd ask you to name one mule that could compete with Secretariat, Frankel, Sea the stars or Desert Orchid to name a few but I don't need to because there is none. A mule is physiologically disadvantaged against a thoroughbred race horse and the best Mule will never beat the best racehorse just like the average mule will not beat the average horse.