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V02 calculation

Hello everyone. I usually run 5 km distance on ordinary shoes, but yesterday I bought a new pair of running shoes. Right from the first try I could shave off almost 3 min, and was keeping the usual effort. Strangely enough my V02 max was the same as before even though I was more efficient with the same level of effort (same avg heart rate). I've been wearing and training with the watch for 2 months now.

Is this normal, shouldn't my V02 max increase in this case? How is V02 calculated?

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0 WillNorthYork over 2 years ago in reply to 4878644

Sergey_Kessel said:
I think runalyze uses different model. For me numbers are different like 5-6 points (sometimes up to 10).

4878644 said:
I tried it for the first time after being suggested in this forum, and my V02 max values on runalyze were exactly the same as my garmin watch. The only difference is that runalyze shows also decimals.

In runalyze's activity list columns, "VO2 Max (by file)" is the Garmin VO2 Max (which is a rolling average), and "Effective VO2 Max" is the runalyze-calculated number (which applies to a single activity).

I also get different numbers from Garmin and Runalyze, but I do agree the trends are useful. I do tag all my races in runalyze, which means that runalyze will apply a correction factor based on the difference between its race predictions and my actual results. Not sure if that's the case for @Sergey_Kessel.

[https://runalyze.com/help/article/all-vo2max-values-changed]

Runalyze explains that effective VO2 Max is calculated from non-maximal efforts based on your ratio of HR and pace. Basically, it extrapolates from that to your race pace and does a reverse lookup in a table of race times. (Some might refer to this as "VDOT" rather than VO2 Max.)

https://runalyze.com/help/article/difference-between-vo2max-and-effective-vo2max

I always thought that Garmin was also only calculating VDOT or Effective VO2 Max (partly based on Firstbeat's white paper which explained that its algorithm also looks at the relationship between HR and pace), but I've also seen claims that Garmin estimates your true VO2 Max, so I'm not sure.