Question for jtupper or other training pace gurus about determining VDOT

You are the one who needs to grow up, you silly drama queen.

VDOT overstates the importance of VO2max and understates the importance of economy. However much you argue about this the study shows how much the genetic component of economy varies.

The best runners show us how much that training component of economy varies. Neither of these traits are accurately represented by the high values in VDOT tables because they are extrapolations of average fitness levels.

I wrote to you earlier:

How do you stand now on the question of how fast a runner with a VO2max of under 70 can run over 5000m?

I think the World Record for that distance will one day be below 12 minutes, and the runner who does it might have a V02max of below 70 or as high as 90. The important issue is the relative economy of the runner, and in this matter, the energy stored and released in the achiles tendon is a crucial factor. The faster you run, the more energy you can store. However, there is another issue here, when the foot is on the ground, an extra push can provide extra energy storage and release. Are you interested in that?

VDOT is a measure of performance. It does not overstate or understate the importance of either VO2Max or Economy. It is a meausure of performance.

If you think the tables are less accurate then some others you are free to use the tables that you think are more accurate. All the tables seems to align fairly closely to me and all of them seem to be "good enough." I am a good pacer but can't really expect to run my tempos any closer than within about 5 secs of the pace I want anyway.

No matter how many times you state this empty assertion, it doesn't make it true. VDOT doesn't say anything about the relative importance of economy or VO2Max. It just says they are both components which make up the final performance of a runner. VDOT's purpose is not to rank one or the other. That's YOUR made-up idea of the purpose, not the one that Daniels clearly stated.

Which again, is completely irrelevant to VDOT

Where is your proof of this? I can just as easily say that the best runners are the ones with genetically superior economy

No, the are the logical extension of a curve which was tested using runners from plodders to near elite. Daniels didn't just test Joe and Jane Sunday jogger. And your point about "extrapolation" has been addressed by Ray-San as well, though you conveniently ignored it.

And I responded earlier. I am interested in anything that makes me a faster runner. But no amount of research into tendon moment-arms or elasticity will change the VDOT tables one iota.

You know why? Becuase THEY WORK. No matter how many times you try to tell us they're "pretentious", the fact is they have been proven to be work over decades. Their utility is not in question.

I've asked you this at least 4 times now. Where is your neuromuscular training plan, genius? How are you going to correct poor misguided Jack Daniels and rescue American elites from VDOT.

Put up or shut up.

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The best runners show us how much that training component of economy varies.

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Where is your proof of this? I can just as easily say that the best runners are the ones with genetically superior economy

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Then you haven't been paying attention to the genetic differences in VO2max and economy.

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Neither of these traits are accurately represented by the high values in VDOT tables because they are extrapolations of average fitness levels.

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No, the are the logical extension of a curve which was tested using runners from plodders to near elite. Daniels didn't just test Joe and Jane Sunday jogger. And your point about "extrapolation" has been addressed by Ray-San as well, though you conveniently ignored it.

No they are not a logical extension, the common economy curve of runners from plodder to near elite will be biased towards lower fitness levels than elite runners, why is that so hard for you and Ray-san to understand?

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I wrote to you earlier:

How do you stand now on the question of how fast a runner with a VO2max of under 70 can run over 5000m?

I think the World Record for that distance will one day be below 12 minutes, and the runner who does it might have a V02max of below 70 or as high as 90. The important issue is the relative economy of the runner, and in this matter, the energy stored and released in the achiles tendon is a crucial factor. The faster you run, the more energy you can store. However, there is another issue here, when the foot is on the ground, an extra push can provide extra energy storage and release. Are you interested in that?

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There is the neuromucular model you need to comprehend.

wellnow wrote:

I can just as easily say that the best runners are the ones with genetically superior economy

Then you haven't been paying attention to the genetic differences in VO2max and economy.

Actually I have been paying attention, which is why I stated why I stated. Feel free to present any evidence which contradicts this. Here's a hint though: Merely making assertions does not constitute evidence.

the common economy curve of runners from plodder to near elite will be biased towards lower fitness levels than elite runners, why is that so hard for you and Ray-san to understand?

Because it is merely another of your empty assertions which has been thoroughly discredited in this thread

There is the neuromucular model you need to comprehend.

Your "neuromucular" model changes absolutely nothing about VDOT nor does it diminish its utility one iota. That's the real world fact you need to comprehend.

Where is your training plan?

Let's make this simple.

wellnow, VDOT is a training tool. Tell us how all the concerns you have affect the usefulness of VDOT as a training too.

I'll try to keep this short, but there are so many points to address...

I guess I'm obsessed with getting things right.

With certain standard caveats, and within reason, of course I believe races times can be predicted with mathematical formulae. I can't even think of a another way to predict race times, except to make them up.

It's true, I "simply don't understand the point that the VDOT tables overstate the importance of VO2max and understate the importance of economy". I don't think it really is a point, and in case you ever establish the point, I don't agree that it's true. I've already said that VDOT tables are economy neutral. You get a high VDOT score based on a performance, which could be due to a high VO2max, or a high economy, or both -- VDOT tables don't make a distinction.

For athletes who use the VDOT tables, there is no connection between VDOT and their own VO2max and economy, except that the product (quotient?) of VDOT and generic economy is the same as the product of their real VO2max and real economy. Presumably you refer to the test subjects. What went into the generic curve was the VO2, velocity, and economy measurements of tested subjects, presumably with both VO2max and economy developed to some level. Why wouldn't the generic curve represent the VO2max and economy of the tested subjects adequately? Why would one be overstated or understated?

Did you read my comparison of Purdy to VDOT? Surely you don't accuse Purdy of any VO2max or economy bias? Purdy is based on World Record velocities for all running events. Yet I found that for distances between 5K and the marathon, a maximum difference of about 1%.

The high VDOT values are not an extrapolation of generic curve. The generic economy curve can compute a VO2 value for any velocity, up to the speed of light (and faster). The generic curve does not need to be extrapolated to accommodate faster performances related to higher VDOTs.

An average economy does not represent an average level of fitness. Elite runners can have the highest level of fitness, yet have a worse economy than the generic one.

Let's try and look at a different way. Suppose my econo-Bekele with a VO2max of 70 runs a 12:37 5K. I can compute his real economy, and his real VO2max. And I can look up his VDOT, and calculate the corresponding generic economy. The very same factors that cause variance in VO2max, cause the same variance in economy. If I compare the ratio of my real economy to the generic economy, it will be the same ratio as my real VO2max to the VDOT index.

That's really the whole point. VO2max is a bad predictor of performance because of the wide variation of VO2max, and equally wide variance of economy across the population. The very same factors are behind both. If we eliminate the wide variance of economies, by just picking one, then we eliminate the variance of the "VO2max calculation". It's no longer real, but that doesn't matter. If you want you real values, you need to do a VO2max test. It's really that simple. We could have picked any economy. If you want, we could define Clayton's economy as the generic one, and produce the exact same table. The only difference would be that VDOT indices are replaced with different CDOT indices, which would be a trivial linear transformation (much like converting from Celsius to Fahrenheit). The remaining columns of times for distances would be roughly the same.

I have no doubt the VDOT tables give accurate comparisons of race performances at different distances, for equally apt athletes properly trained for that distance. As I said before, they correlate will with Purdy. VDOT isn't the best performance predictor (Purdy is!), but for distance events it corresponds very well to Purdy. You could say it's bad for sprints (which tap into other energy systems), but this is well known and to be expected from a "Performance Table for Distance Running".

You keep saying conceit, which seems strange to me. This is what scientists do -- come up with equations to model what they observe. I presume Daniel's choice to map velocities to VO2's was largely due to his background of physiological testing. He probably re-used or simplified existing equations and models he was familiar with. Of course there are many other ways to predict race performances, and indeed there are no shortage of race predictors built on all of these ways.

wellnow wrote:

You thinks it's silly of me to point out just how pretentious VDOT is?

If you guys are so smart, then how come you can't address the issue here?:

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/211/20/3266

Huh? What's the issue exactly? If shorter ankles lead to faster times, you'll get a higher VDOT.

They are extrapolations, because elite runners' superior fitness, does not relate to the common economy curve, for the simple reason that it represents an average fitness of all the runners tested.

An elite runner with a worse economy than the generic curve, has a superior economy to a slower runner with the same VO2max as him or her.

The isse is that the study shows why elite times can be run by runners with a very low VO2max, a point disputed by others on this thread. If runners don't believe this is possible, then it proves my point that nubers such as the high VDOT values will have a generally negative effect. It also shows how the VDOT values overstate the importance of VO2max and understate the value of economy.

Why do I think that VDOT is a conceit? Because I don't believe that mathematical formulae are generally relevant to prediciting race times for which there are a considerable number of variables. I think the whole thing is very pretentious. From a coach I expect valuable philosophy which empowers the runner. You get such a philosophy from Lydiard, not a sense of hoplelessnes in the venture of trying to make huge improvements in race times, which I believe is implied in the VDOT tables.

You're entitled to scoff at vdot as a pace prediction method if you wish. No pace prediction tool is accurate and none promote themselves at such, at least not to you expectations.

Also, you're still hung up in reading too much into the numerical vdot indices themselves. You're showing a flawed understanding of vdot in terms of it's relationship to v02max and economy and, s such, I don't think you can sufficiently understand the concept of generic economy enough to understand why your arguments aren't sound.

Pointing out these flaws to you appears futile. Maybe at some other point you can clear your head and try again.

btw, that post was in response to wellnow, not vdot-er.

I'll try to add a few comments when I return from a trip. Who would have ever thought Jimmy and I would have attracted so much attention to some enjoyable research we did over the years (including runners who were Olympic Champions, World Record holders, etc)

I will take a shot at this one wrote:

You're entitled to scoff at vdot as a pace prediction method if you wish. No pace prediction tool is accurate and none promote themselves at such, at least not to you expectations.

Also, you're still hung up in reading too much into the numerical vdot indices themselves. You're showing a flawed understanding of vdot in terms of it's relationship to v02max and economy and, s such, I don't think you can sufficiently understand the concept of generic economy enough to understand why your arguments aren't sound.

Pointing out these flaws to you appears futile. Maybe at some other point you can clear your head and try again.

I'm not misunderstanding anything, I'm the one who pointed you all to the research paper showing heel length and the relationship to economy. It's a very important paper in my opinion, but who else has recognized that here, myself Morten and who else?

Not to anyone in particular --

Some information that may be useful regarding the development of the VDOT tables: More than 100 runners were tested on multiple occasions. As memory serves me, 5 of the those runners accounted for more than 10 world records, 2 Olympic Gold Medals, 2 Silver and a couple Bronze, plus numerous National Records and Championships.

The gas analyzers used were of the chemical volumetric type, the kind that should be used to verify the validity of the reference gases that are used today with electronic analyzers. The problem with many labs is that they don’t have properly calibrated analyzers so if on a particular day the analyzer is spitting out high VO2 values, that will produce high VO2max data (which suggests great aerobic power) and high sub-max data (which indicates poor economy).

I recently saw test results of a female runner who was told her VO2max is 83ml/kg, but upon examining her economy data, she was either the worst ever tested or the equipment was giving out falsely high VO2 values, which I would suspect. You can’t look at a runner and say, “that’s an economical runner, or that’s a runner with poor economy.” We tried to see if economy was a metabolic thing (and it may be to some degree, because in another study we did find a positive correlation between high VO2max – desirable – and high VO2 sub-max – not desirable), but with a group of good runners found greater variation in running economy among them than they demonstrated in walking up hill, cycling or even arm cranking, and these other activities were not even familiar to them.

Certainly economy varies, and certainly for various biomechanical reasons, and for variations in weight distribution and tendon attachments, bone length variations, etc. I guess we should have used a different term for VDOT, maybe we should call it a PU (performance unit). In any case, that PU is associated with how fast anyone can run any particular distance (particularly in the range of 1500 to marathon). With even more complicated calculations, Jimmy came up with a good way of estimating performances for distances not run, based on others that have been run.

One thing that has happened over the years is that people have purchased the book, Oxygen Power and using the tables therein, have come up with their own formula for describing pace and publishing prediction tables. Some of those people have been kind enough to mention where they got their data, while others have opted to ignore that and pretend they made them up themselves.

It should be mentioned that in addition to VO2max and running economy, another variable is important in how fast you can run any particular distance race and that is fractional utilization, which may be partly psychological in nature, because that tells you the fraction of your max that you can sustain for the duration of whatever race you are running (probably associated with lactate threshold).

It is interesting to note how well the PU values can estimate times for various distances. One year we used shorter distances to predict Boston Marathon times for a good number of runners, and on the average were about 5 minutes too fast in the estimates. However, that was better than we thought because some people took that long to get to the starting line.

I think it is fun to look at records for various distances and see how the PU values compare. Certainly a higher PU will be associated with new future records, which is how it should be. For those who wonder what physiological (or biomechanical) mechanism is responsible, I suggest you do some research to figure that out. We have weighted shoes and lower legs to see the effect on economy and it is surprising what effect a relatively little variation in lower extremity weight can have on economy. For those who are sincerely interested or who question some of the data that have been arrived at and/or published, I think the best approach is to do some research yourself and not just rely on what you hear others have found.

Jack,

Thank you for taking the time to write all that. Nothing like getting the information right from the source. I know this board is pretty bad most of the time but information like this is the reason I keep coming here.

jtupper wrote:

It should be mentioned that in addition to VO2max and running economy, another variable is important in how fast you can run any particular distance race and that is fractional utilization, which may be partly psychological in nature, because that tells you the fraction of your max that you can sustain for the duration of whatever race you are running (probably associated with lactate threshold).

There was a study out not long ago that made the run around the boards, I don't have the link, but most will remember it as 'perfect running pace'. The gist of the study, runners regardless of their pacing abilities exhibit a similar characteristic of having a minimum oxygen/distance consumption rate in their pace range. For men tested, and these were men from widely different abilities, they all showed nearly the same minimum point, at about 8.13 miles per hour (roughly 220 meters / minute). Women showed the same characteristic but at a different pace than the men.

As you approach that pace, oxygen consumption per meter falls. When you surpass that pace, oxygen consumption per meter rises. What it means, and it's true for every runner, when your pace rises above that point...the 'increase' in O2 consumption for a given unit rise in velocity rises as the velocity increases. So from 8.2 mph to 8.3 mph sees an 'increase' in O2 consumption of X. From 8.3 to 8.4, the 'increase' is >X, and from 8.4 to 8.5 is even greater than >X...and so on.

I thought it was an interesting study. Because they viewed O2 consumption in terms of distance rather than pace, it highlighted an interesting phenomenon inherent in every runner, that there's a 'tax' associated with fast running, and that tax goes up the faster the runner.

Better to use m/min than MPH, but even better to use ml O2 per kg Body weight per Km . For example if running 200 m/min and VO2 is 40ml/kg this means it will take 5 min to run 1K and 5X40 = 200 ml per Kg per Km. Another runner running 250 m/min may have a VO2 of 50ml/kg, and 50 X 4min to run the K = 200ml/kg per km and the two have equal economy. This is useful if you want to compare females with males for example, because the two genders won't typically run at the same speed when running at the same relative fraction of teir respective VO2 maxes. Early studies suggested men are more economical than women, but that was based on both running at the same absolute speed, which is not at the same fraction of max (not the same relative intensity). Big differences in economy with growth. Proably even more among swimmers than runners due to the greater technique factor in swimming

Thanks for the explanation Jack.

I believe that it is possible to have a similar super economy at very high paces too. My explanation for this is that by using an extra push off, we can store extra energy in the achiles tendon, increase the stride rate without decreasing stride rate and improve oxygen economy. To do this you have to be able to conrol what your feet are doing during a short ground contract time, and this control can be easily gained (for me, and surely for other too) with a few minute of simple plyometric work spread over an hour or two before a run.