How VO2 Max Is Important To Marathon Performance

Audio Transcript

Sinead: Hey everyone, and welcome to the podcast.

Today’s question is from Mark, and Mark says, “As we train, our VO2 Max increases naturally. Is there any correlation between VO2 Max and marathon performance? Should we aim to increase our VO2 Max during marathon training?

This is a fantastic question and just a little bit of background for our listeners who aren’t familiar with VO2 Max.

VO2 Max is essentially your body’s ability to consume oxygen, so it’s in numerical measurement of that ability, and this number varies from person to person, and it’s largely genetic.

On average, that number is usually somewhere between 30 and 60, and for women who run, it’s usually between 45 and 60, whereas with men who run, it’s usually between 50 and 75.

Then there are your elite athletes that sometimes have VO2 Maxes of upwards of 80.

You can see there’s a large range here, and when I say these numbers, you’re probably wondering what I’m referring to.

The units are milliliters of oxygen per minute, per kilogram of body weight. Getting on to Mark’s question, the short answer is essentially that VO2 Max is far more important for shorter events than longer events.

Your five K, your 10 K, that’s where VO2 Max comes more into play whereas the half marathon, up to the marathon, not as much.

This is because typically well trained athletes, these are your top of the top athletes and people that have been running for years, can run at close to 100% of their VO2 Max during a five K race.

Usually, it’s somewhere around 98% of their VO2 Max.

As distance increases, the ability to run at VO2 Max is a decrease significantly, so on average, for well-trained athletes, it goes down to 92% for a 10 K, and then 78% for a marathon.

When I say 78% again I’m talking about, elite athletes, the top of the top, so very experienced athletes who have been running for years, and have accumulated all these different physiological adaptations, and increase their VO2 Max.

When you hear about this VO2 Max specific workouts, usually these are for five K, 10 K training because you’re trying to increase the number at which your body is able to take in more oxygen and deliver it to your muscles, enabling you to run faster for a given effort.

You’re probably thinking, “That sounds like it would be pretty important for the marathon too,” and it is but it’s only half of the equation.

When it comes to the marathon, the other half of the equation is, how efficiently you put that oxygen to use.

This is where the sustainable percent VO2 Max comes into play, as well as a lactate threshold.

First off, we’ll talk about sustainable percent VO2 Max. This is the percent of VO2 Max that can be sustained during a race.

As race distance increases, the percent VO2 Max that can be sustained decreases, as I said earlier.

Research suggests that this is particularly important in races of greater than 30 minutes duration, and it just continues to become more and more important as the race distance increases.

In shorter races, where you’re running about 1500 meters to five K, the sustainable VO2 Max percent appears to be less important.

Research shows that sustainable VO2 Max, during a five 5 race did not really find any relationship between performance and sustainable VO2 Max.

This is not really surprising since athletes are able to race at close to their VO2 Max during races of less than 5K. Again, top of the top athletes can run at about 98% of their VO2 Max during a 5K, and so can experienced runners.

There’s little scope to improve the sustainable percent VO2 Max in these events. However, as race duration increases, it becomes harder to maintain a pace that is close to the maximal oxygen consumption, so the VO2 Max.

That’s where sustainable percent VO2 Max becomes really important. That’s why you do all these workouts, like tempo runs and steady state runs and long interval workouts, because this is going to give your body the aerobic capacity to increase your percent sustainable VO2 Max.

It will also help you maintain a pace that is close to your maximal oxygen consumption during a marathon.

This is why, occasionally, you will do some speed workouts during marathon training, but it is not really what is emphasized when you are in a marathon build up.

You want to focus on these longer workouts to build that aerobic capacity and that’s sustainable VO2 Max.

Now that we have talked about percent, sustainable VO2 Max, let’s talk about lactic threshold, which also comes into play during a marathon.

Lactate threshold is the intensity of exercise at which lactate begins to accumulate in the blood, at a faster rate than it can be removed.

In other words, your lactate threshold is the fastest pace you can run without generating more lactic acid than your body can utilize and reconvert back into energy.

This pace usually corresponds to about 10 mile or a half marathon race pace, and this is why doing tempo runs or threshold runs is going to help increase that lactate threshold.

By practicing running just below your lactate threshold, you can begin to decrease the pace at which you begin to produce too much lactic acid for your body.

When your threshold is lowered, you’re able to run faster with less effort, which for the marathon obviously means you can burn fuel more efficiently, and save it for that crucial last 10K of the race.

As you can see Mark, VO2 Max is important in general, but it is not really a deal breaker for the marathon.

It’s more important for 5K, 10K whereas for the marathon, your percent sustainable VO2 Max is more important as well as your lactate threshold.

Again, I think it’s important to remember that numbers aren’t everything at the end of the day.

I have beat plenty of runners that have had higher VO2 Maxes and lactate thresholds than me, and I’ve been beaten by plenty of runners that have had lower VO2 Maxes and lower lactate thresholds than me.

These numbers aren’t always everything.

Mark, thank you so much for your question. I hope you and our listeners today took away some useful information to apply to your training.

If you have a question you would like one of our coaches to answer in an upcoming podcast, you can submit it at runnersconnect.net/daily.

We would love your questions and would love to help you in any way we can.

Finally, I want to thank our sponsors.

You know the scene. You get back from your run, check your time, maybe do your stretches and then perhaps you reach for your protein powder or some chocolate milk to start the muscle recovery process.

The vitamins and minerals of your body think, “Awesome, we’ll be next,” but the truth is, they don’t have the time to think that, as they are pretty busy carrying out the roughly one billion chemical reactions occurring in your body every second in every cell. Do you think you’re tired?

Unfortunately, nine times out of ten, you and thousands of runners neglect these busy little micro nutrients, and this neglect not only causes performance to fizzle, but it can also potentially cause long-term damage to your body.

The team at Runners Beans know firsthand what it’s like to run on empty, and the problem they kept coming up against is the lack of supplements that are designed for runners, so they set about creating their own.

They knew they did not want to be popping pills three times a day, but when they started looking, a dose of two to four pills a day seemed unavoidable to get the levels needed as runners.

Instead of relying on what had gone before, they found the innovators and the industry, and have produced a breakthrough liquid formula.

Research shows liquid may have up to 88% better absorption than tablets and capsules.

Runners Beans has helped me train harder, recover faster, and feel so much better doing it, and I recommend it to anyone.

Be sure to check it out at runnersconnect.net/runnersbeans and use the code EXTRA KICK, to receive a 10% discount off all purchases.