From: praetzel@marconi.uwaterloo.ca (Eric Praetzel)
Subject: Re: VO2 max (was Re: Heart Rate Survey: Results)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 19:23:52 GMT

Well I generally agree with the other posts but am leery of training the AT.
I think that it is trainable to the extend of a few percent if you are fairly
fit to begin with but thats about all.  Given the large difference between
people (and the fact that everyone seems to drop me without doing any signif.
amount of training or even organized training) I am not holding my breath for
any good training methods. But I am open to suggestions.  I am only interested
in anerobic power and my tests at the university here show no difference
between my late January fitness (after starting interval training) and my
mid summer power at AT.
  Anyway.  I will see if I can contact the provincal team/coach and see if they
bother to keep hard data on their tests.  It will probably take a few weeks
but with any luck I can get some good data.  At the moment I seem to be unable
to talk anyone who is faster than me into do VO2 max tests.  Gee, its not like
they are taking core samples of your muscles (biopsieses) with harpoons.  You
just have to ride until drop (about 25 min).  If you have a chance (anyone out
there) drop by you local Kineasology dept. and see if they need some lab rats
for any experiment.  They normall baseline you using a maximal VO2 test and
may go as far as measuring stroke volume of your heart (waiting for my results
to come back).  They actually only use the VT (ventrical threshold) which is
the first kink in the vol O2 vs vol CO2 if I remember correctly.  Mine was 
about 130 bpm equivalent and the tests I did were only upto 110% of the VT.

In article <1992Aug25.171943.6161@cbnews.cb.att.com> ampe@cbnews.cb.att.com (john.e.ampe) writes:
>If this is true, I am mystified.  How can we possibly talk about VO2
>max if we can't agree on a single definition of it?  Part of my
>problem with Eric's post was that he was switching between the
>two definitions without any clear indication of which one he was
>talking about.  
  Ah.  Finally its said in english.  Generally VO2 is vol(O2) or volume of O2.
I will only use VO2/kg at rare times and endevour to give the units.

>different conclusions depending on which value you consider.  If what
>you say is true and the medical community uses the terms
>interchangeably then I'll give up right now trying to figure out
  The Kin. people all pretty well only use VO2 as a volume per min. because
they are interested in repeatable results for each person.  They don't really
care about comparing absolute values of VO2 with each other.  I guess you 
could say that they like to skirt the problem.  Since there are such large
differences between people they would like to avoid that and just try to get
consistant numbers that are representitive of a persons processes.  They
don't want your breakfast to upset the whole experiment.
  As a side note.  I would have expected that the efficiency would lump in
all of the differences between people.  Since it is an overall measure of
mechanical power out vs chemical "power" developed it should show the
difference between a pro and a normal person.  When you multiply by the
VO2 at AT you should have a number proportional to the power; a number that
can be compared absolutely.  But I don't have enough data at the moment
to do any comparisons like that.  I have some charts for lactate concentrations
(Pulse Lactate Training book) and I have my own VO2 max tests.  Various texts
mentioned 26%, 29% as typical (?) efficiencies for pro riders.  But I don't
know the conditions so can't do a comparison.  However, I may be able to get
data for a "normal" person.  Here they have a whole hard drive of data and
they talk about confidentiality of ....
  Well my goal for this winter is to build some sort of setup so that I can
measure absolute power and see what the effect of different training
techniques are.  Time trials are fine but I find that the real world throws
in all sorts of variables like wind.  Given a windy night some people speed
up and others slow down a lot (15km flat course, out and back, done weekly).
  - Eric
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