VO2 Max calculation issue

Etupes25 said:

Another possibility is that the weight has not been entered correctly in the user profile... Maybe the weight is simply off, or it is expressed in pounds instead of kilos.

If that were the case, then either:

- OP has coincidentally made a huge weight input error at precisely the same time that they stopped running and started cycling. (This is assuming that weight plays a roughly equal role in estimating running and cycling VO2 Max, and that role is significant enough to cause the type of apparent error shown in the OP.)

or

- OP's weight has always been off by a large margin, and weight plays a very large role in estimating cycling vo2max but not in estimating running vo2max (in this case, weight must play little or no role.)

I happen to think that running VO2 max can be estimated without knowing the user's weight (although I'm personally unsure whether the Garmin/Firstbeat method actually uses weight or not), but we've had that discussion elsewhere. I know nothing about cycling, except that afaik at least power and HR are used to estimate VO2 Max, so I can't say anything about that.

There are still two separate issues here:

1) why is cycling VO2 max seemingly calculated incorrectly?

2) is the behavior of "VO2 Max" (whether you interpret that as running VO2 max or "dominant VO2 Max (either running or cycling)") desirable from the end user's POV?

If the answer to 2) was "yes" (in all cases) then this thread wouldn't exist.

In the cases that the answer to 2) is "no", then the answer to 1) is irrelevant.

Someone who primarily runs may not care about their cycling VO2 max, or they may care about their running VO2 max even in the cases that it's not the "best" VO2 Max.

If Garmin is either "switching the source of the dominant VO2 Max to cycling" (as you say), or "using cycling vo2 max to influence the value of running vo2 max" (as I say), either way the user has lost information about their running VO2 Max.