Question for jtupper or other training pace gurus about determining VDOT

I havent seen DR. Daniels post for a couple weeks now. Personally I blame you (Wellmow) for this.

I would much rather read advice from a PhD that has spent nearly his entire life collecting and analyzing data than from you.

I also agree with a previous poster that I have NEVER seen any sarcasm from DR. Daniels. However if it was directed at you, then it was justified.

Posts here get deleted all the time but threads here almost never get deleted unless they get incredibly out of hand in the gutter language or criticize republicans.

It seems what you really meant was that he has been sarcastic with YOU.

Yes, that's exactly right. Nasty old wellnow, the mere layman daring to question the PhD.

No no no! Not "nasty" wellnow. Poor, poor, put-upon wellnow. Poor, misunderstood wellnow!

He's a hero. A cowboy. A renegade. A lone shining beacon of truth. He's rescuing us from that nasty (very effective) training so many of us have done over the years. He's saving those poor American elites, held back by nothing but years reading VDOT tables and crying in anguish that their VO2Max values were too low. I heard that Ryan Hall wept tears of joy when he read this thread. At last he is free.

But the road to Truth is fraught with peril, my friends. The Daniels acolytes are everywhere. Undermining poor wellnow at every turn. Countering the obviously correct vague personal experience of one man with their fancy "facts" and their so-called "decades of peer-reviewed research".

The journey to muscle tone nirvana will not be an easy one. But we will make it. Wellnow will not be deterred. He is still there. Fighting.

Fighting for us all.

The VDOT numbers above 80 are. Eventually you will admit it, maybe in a few years time.

You and others proved my point that Daniels' readers don't understand VDOT, how it was calculated and how it actually relates to finess.

YOU DON'T KNOW HOW IT WAS CALCULATED.

wellnow wrote:

The VDOT numbers above 80 are. Eventually you will admit it, maybe in a few years time.

You and others proved my point that Daniels' readers don't understand VDOT, how it was calculated and how it actually relates to finess.

Fight on, internet warrior.

Fight on.

heyyo wrote:

YOU DON'T KNOW HOW IT WAS CALCULATED.

Neither does JD, he got someone else to do that, with the help of a computer program.

Anyways, the common economy curve is an average of all the runners tested, so it cannot be extrapolated to give values for today's elite runners. Look at the graph of the three women runners. A long time ago, those times were World Class, but now a World Class runner is 40 seconds faster over 3000m. They are simply better trained, with more power and endurance. That is the way forward, but you won't get that information from comparing the VDOT numbers.

Incredible. You are STILL putting that straw man out there. Let's try again.

wellnow wrote

However most runners just don't see it that way, they imagine that the 84-85 figures are feasible as a mean value of the top runners' VO2max. It makes them look like physical freaks, and that is what people believe. The VDOT tables do nothing to dispove this belief, so in effect, the VDOT tables fail in their intended purpose.

Let's settle this once and for all. What do you -- the self proclaimed only person who really understands VDOT -- say is is the "intended purpose" of the VDOT tables? In two sentences ore less, please.

Please, share this with us so that we may better understand how the tables fail in their purpose?

The VDOT table is a pace chart, where The numbers next to each horizontal column, the VDOT numbers, represent an average reationship (a mean value of all the runners tested) between VO2max and VO2 economy. These columns represent proposed racing times based on current racing fitness of all runers male and female.

That's two sentences giving what I believe is the intended purpose of the VDOT tables. However, those average numbers have been extrapolated to higher values which give a false impression about elite runners, making them look as though they have much higher oxygen uptakes than they actually do.

The very fact that so many people are arguing about me on this point, just goes to show how they don't understand the concept, or why Dr. Daniels has let himself and his readers down by contradicting his own views about the superior economy of elite runners.

Would it have helped if Jack had replaced the Vdot numerical values with different pieces of fruit? So let's say we use a scale of increasing relative size of the fruit to correspond to the increasing levels of race performance. So we start with pomegranate seeds to represent the slowest race performances on the chart and end up with a 400 pound pumpkin for the 12:37 5k.

So, as a runner I can simply locate my 15:30 5k and realize that I am somewhere near a pear or a gala apple.

Would this make more sense to you, wellnow?

OK, so far...

That's not a purpose. It's an origin. It's where you think he got the numbers from, not what the numbers are to be used for.

Personally, being the pedantic guy that I am, when I wanted to understand VDOT and its purpose, I went ahead and actually read the stated purpose in the book that introduced it. Tell you what, as I quote it, I'll even go to the trouble of giving you page numbers, so you can go learn something:

"VDOT - a measure of your current running ability"

"VDOT reflects everything that an individual calls on to perform in a race" p. 46

Hmmm. So it is supposed to measure your running ability.

To what end, I wonder:

"These VDOT dables can relate performances over an unlimited number of distances and can be used to predict performances in races of any distance from a known performance in a race of any other distances. IN addition, the formulas associated with the development of the VDOT tables allow runners to identify the pace associated with a desired training intensity" p. 48

So the purpose, it would appear is to relate equivalent performances and to establish training intensities. In case that second part wasn't clear, he states it explicitly later.

"Using VDOT to Establish Training Intensities" p. 50

Jack doesn't even agree with you on the purpose of the thing he invented. Nowhere does he state that the purpose is to tell you your VO2Max or anything about it. In fact he states quite explicitly that your VDOT may not correspond to your VO2 max at all.

Again, wrong, given the above. You yourself admitted in this very thread that VDOT could not be used to make any conclusions about VO2Max.

So merely disagreeing with you is a sign of not understanding? How arrogant can you be? The very fact that you argue with the clearly stated definition and purpose of the concept, written by the man who created it, goes to show that you are completely out of touch with reality.

It's a pace chart, nothing more, nothing less.

VDOT-er wrote:

Jack doesn't even agree with you on the purpose of the thing he invented. Nowhere does he state that the purpose is to tell you your VO2Max or anything about it. In fact he states quite explicitly that your VDOT may not correspond to your VO2 max at all.

I never said that, your imagination is working overtime.

And you are wrong to disagree that the VDOT tables cannot be extrapolated to elite runners fitness levels.

This just proves my point that you don't understand how VDOT was calculated. The numbers above 80 are unfeasible for the reasons I stated earlier in the thread.

Not quite. It is also a performance equivalence chart. In both regards, it works very well.

Of course you have. Many times on this thread. To you, VDOT is nothing more than the average of maximum and minimum possible VO2 max values. Right on page one of this thread you state that as your premise, using Clayton as your first example.

But that is where you went wrong and no matter how many times you have it beaten into your head, even by the guy who created it, you still don't get it.

VDOT is not merely the average of your max and min possible VO2 Max values. The VDOT tables did not come straight from a simple average. Again, all you have to do is read the f***ing book

"By using the equations that generate the curves in figures 3.1 and 3.2 along with a few other calculations, Jimmy Gilbert and I developed the VDOT table that have been used very successfully since the 1970s"

And here is another one even more explicit (and repeated from the last post) just to make it clear:

I'll go so far as to say that your VDOT takes into account your psychological input into racing, because instead of using lab tests to determine your ability level, we're using your race performances which are affected by your motivation and willingness to deal with discomfort. VDOT reflects everything that an individual calls upon to perform in a race

You are wrong to maintain it. Even looking at a WR performance by someone like Geb or Bekele, I see quite a bit of unity in the equivalent performances predicted. Not perfect - they never are, even for sub-elite runners - but quite uniform across the board.

This just proves the point that you don't understand what VDOT is for The number above 80 are perfectly "feasible" because they don't require anyone to have a VO2Max of over 100. Nobody who uses the table even knows what their VO2Max is in the first place. And nobody who uses the table gives a damn what mathematical formula Daniels used to determine the given paces and equivalent performances, just that they WORK. Which they do extremely well.

I repeat; I never said that that the purpose of VDOT is to tell you your VO2Max, that is a product of your over active imagination. I said that people misunderstand the extrapolation which SUGGESTS that the best distance runners in the World have much higher VO2max values that they do in reality.

This is where the VDOT tables contradict JD's information about running economy.

Here is a question for you. Why does economy worsen the higher the VDOT value?

I'll give you 48 hours to come up with a good answer.

wellnow wrote:

Here is a question for you. Why does economy worsen the higher the VDOT value?

.

It doesn't

wellnow wrote:Here is a question for you. Why does economy worsen the higher the VDOT value?

Damn, I'm jumping back in because you need the nail put in your coffin.

You're assuming that VO2max and running economy are the only two values used to determine VDOT. They aren't. VDOT considers everything that goes into performing well in races.

To answer your question most directly: one (of many) values you're missing is lactate threshold. VDOT accounts for lactate threshold. You're trying to say it's only about maxVO2 and economy. It's not.

I have the 1st edition of the Daniels book here in front of me:

"The physiological needs a distance runner should address are VO2max (through central and peripheral adaptations), lactate threshold, speed and economy...You could go to a lab somewhere and get a series of tests run on yourself to measure your VO2max, running economy and lactate threshold but that would cost a lot of money and may not be available."

...and later on

"Basically, Gilbert and I forced every runner of equal performance onto a common economy curve, which meant they would also have the same mathematically-generated VO2max and a similar lactate-response curve. Equally performing runners are assigned equal aerobic profiles, which means that they would also have an identical pseudoVO2max, but not necessarily the VO2max they would come up with in a laboratory test.

Instead of referring to this pseudoVO2max (the one based strictly on performance) as VO2max, we use the term "VDOT."

There. Suck on that. End of discussion. End of thread. You're wrong.

What, no response yet?

All improvements are dependant on central and peripheral adaptations.

You haven't addressed the issues I mentioned.