Originally Posted by
ToddTheBod
VO2max is HIGHLY trainable. Everyone here posted in this thread right now would test in the upper percentiles vs. the average popular of untrained humans.
Edit: obviously not conclusive, but I'm not crazy in saying that there are cat3s are in the 60s, and fast ones could be mid to upper 60s:
https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/5...e-pro-cyclists. I do not mean that ALL fast cat3s would be mid to upper 60s, but there will be fast cat3s in the mid to upper 60s.
Edit: here's some more data, cat3s at 65 +/- 2:
http://sites.edb.utexas.edu/uploads/...le-Results.pdf.
Highly trainable but genetically limited, right? Meaning that it may not take much to go from a sedentary 40 to a well-trained 55, but no amount of training beyond that will boost vo2 max if that's your ceiling. I mean, with three years of very specific vo2 max training I haven't been able to lift my 5 minute power a single watt. And that's after a decade of very structured training as a base. There's just nothing more there.
I don't doubt there's any number of crazy numbers at most any level. But I'm very incredulous of the idea that there are a significant number of cat 3s (and by extension, 2s and 1s with even higher vo2 maxes) in that upper echelon of vo2 max.
The couple of people I've known who have had upper 70s low 80s vo2 max could jump off the couch and produce the power that it takes me months of very, very hard training to accomplish. And they can do those efforts over and over and over again. It was brazenly obvious there was something unique about their abilities. They just rode off the front of races all the way up to the 1/2 level.
I don't see any cat 3s that can do anything remotely like that. And it's the rare cat 1 I see that can do stuff like that.