VO2 max huge drops
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Hi all,
My Suunto 9 peak dropped my VO2 from 52 down to 39 within a week while I was traveling in the Himalayas. That was strange but perhaps it has something to do with altitude.
BUT: after my trailrun today it again dropped from 51 down to 41. How is that possible?
Thank you
Markus -
@Markus
I assume your trip is a while back and you gained back 51?
did you use “trailrunning” for your trailrun? -
@Markus hikes usually destroy VO2Max. Basically watch tries to find a correlation between HR and speed. So if you’re much slower with higher HR your VO2 estimate will go down, especially after a few consequent hikes.
As for trailruns - dunno, afaik there was an introduction of altitude correct to VO2 estimates, but I’m not sure if this improved estimates by much, especially on steeper trails. -
yes it’s all set to trailrunning. It’s my standard setting. And yes, it took me 4 weeks to climb back up from 39 to 51. Now I’m down again to 41 … and within 2 hours!
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@DMytro hi thx. It was a trail-run - a steep one. The setting was definitely set to trail-run today. I know its just a number but it’s a little frustrating
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@Markus
VO2max is an estimate based on the cooper test plus some factors (roughly speaking) when doing anything else but flat runs.
If your run was too steep, not even trailrunning mode will be able to account properly for it -
@Markus btw, SA allows you to do a cooper test now, if you want to get a better estimate for the number.
I hope in the future one can choose to toggle of VO2MAX estimates for walks/hikes and maybe trailruns also. -
@DMytro yes, VO2max does not work well for hiking, and works for trail running only if the trail is actually runnable. If it’s steep and you power hike, it is not going to work. I would also prefer to have it only for running, well maybe if I was Suunto I would save money from Firstbeat licensing and remove it completely. If you want to know your VO2max do a lab test, or some kind or proxy test.
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@isazi well, I actually like the idea of having some sort of fitness level displayed on the watch, doesn’t need to be VO2Max tho. What I would like is if it would work for more sports. But in the current state I’d rather ditched it as well.
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It makes me wonder why it’s estimated for hiking when it’s so unreliable on everything but running on flat.
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@Łukasz-Szmigiel I suppose some might consider speed walking in the woods to be hiking. And I can imagine the algorithm working reasonalbly well (at least equally well as for trail running) for this specific case. But I guess having a toggle in SA or in the watch should solve this problem.
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@DMytro I’ve been asking for this for quite some time now. Well, at last there’s music control per sports in S9PP.
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@Łukasz-Szmigiel ah cool, I didn’t know that!
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As you know from a recent survey, Suunto is looking into performance metrics and more. I guess we’ll see it next year.
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@isazi, I took a two hour walk recently, with a “good” recorded GPS track and no HR recorded using an S5. The V02 Max estimate for that training was 50.6. Super surprised to see an estimated value without any heart rate recorded. That V02 value matches my most recent training run, best guess that was just passed through, but it’s confusing when some actual runs will have a null value for that training.
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@Bradleyd vo2max estimation shouldn’t update when there’s no hr. Most likely you’re seeing last value from your run.
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@Łukasz-Szmigiel Agree that this number is likely from a previous training event…but…the V02Max estimate is listed as a property for the walk where there was no HR record. I also have a recent run training that is an ordinary10K, no different from the training previous or next. In this case, though, no VO2Max appears in the summary.
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@Bradleyd as for the walk: I think vO2 is a cumulative value, so if it didn’t change because no HR was recorded, it’s still shown at the end.