VO2 Max Training: The Art of Not Wasting Your Time
Stop Running in Circles (Literally & Figuratively)
Most runners treat VO2 max training like a punishment—run until your lungs explode, then do it again. That’s not science, that’s self-sabotage. The real magic happens at the edge of discomfort, not deep in the pain cave.
Train Like a Scientist, Not a Lunatic
Four-minute intervals at your actual 5K pace (not the fantasy one in your head) with equal rest. Or go old-school with 12x400m at a controlled effort—just hard enough to work, not hard enough to wreck you. More isn’t better. Better is better.
Why Suffering Doesn’t Equal Success
Burnout is not a flex. Training smarter means finishing your race with a grin, not a grimace. It’s the difference between progress and plateauing in frustration. Your lungs, legs, and future PRs will thank you.
So… what happens if you stop guessing and start training with actual intent?
Links & Future Learnings
- 📈 Get your free download 1% better download and quick start guide – https://dlakecreates.com/base5kfree
- 🎧 Listen, read and learn more here https://dlakecreates.com/vo2max-brenton
- 12x400m Workout Explained – https://dlakecreates.com/400m
- Tempo runs & Lactate Explained – https://dlakecreates.com/tempo
- Brenton’s journey to running sub 3 hour marathon – https://dlakecreates.com/brenton
- Vo2 Max Explained – https://dlakecreates.com/vo2max Vdot Calculator Explained – https://dlakecreates.com/vdot
- DLake Runs on IG – https://instagram.com/dlakecreates
- DLake Runs on Strava – https://www.strava.com/athletes/120507
Listen below or watch above to the full episode or read the article summary to level up your run game.
[00:00:00] In this video, you’re going to learn how to optimize your VO two max training so that you can improve your speed over all distances, your endurance over all distances and race day performance. Without burning out because too much VO two max work can burn you out.
[00:00:14] I’ll be touching on why VO two max matters for runners. The biggest mistakes in VO two max training, the best VO two max workouts that I’ve found through science and my own experience and talking to experts balancing VO two max and zone two training with some of that zone three tempo running the lactate kind of lactate threshold area and how to avoid over training from high intensity work, AKA over-training syndrome, and the difference between over-training and overreaching.
[00:00:41] I’m Darren certified running and nutrition coach, sub three hour marathoner, 10 hour Ironman finisher. And since 1996, I’ve been helping other self coached runners researching and experimenting on how to get better 1 percent each day
[00:00:52] for myself and all these people that I’m coaching. Unlike other running brands, we don’t do the inspirational and motivational quick fixes instead. The 1 percent better runner transforms you with small step by step daily habit improvements, all to help you live an amazing run life.
[00:01:06] Let’s get into the episode.
[00:01:08] This was all from a conversation that I had with a guy that I am running and pacing in a marathon.
[00:01:15] I’m going to do a three hour marathon with Brenton.
[00:01:17] Did episode with him up here. Go check that out.
[00:01:19] it was actually the first time we met and he was trying to do sub three hours few months back. Didn’t get it. Got three hours. two minutes, three hours, three minutes. And now I’m coaching him. I’m running with him in the actual marathon and we’re going to see if we can nail this in the next, we’ve got a couple of months to do it.
[00:01:33] So he actually did a VO two max test and um, I will have some video of that VO two max test that he did and a lactate threshold test, which was really, really cool. I’ve never heard that being done in the same session and we got some really interesting data from it. So I found out that there’s some areas that he needs to work on and with those areas.
[00:01:53] We’re going to actually adjust his training or I’m actually suggesting certain things. And I realized, Hey, why don’t I post this up on YouTube and as a podcast and some social media content and help some folks out there that might need some help with tweaking their VO two max workouts and their lactate tolerance and the lactate threshold and even their lactate clearance workouts, which are more tempo runs as more tempo runs and a bit more about other things, like zone two running.
[00:02:16] He needs to do more of that. That was indicated from the test and race day strategies. How we can do some negative splitting and he wants to also lose some weight. He thinks he’s a very muscular dude. He has, you know, 10 percent 9 percent body fat, super chiseled cut six pack jacked type of guy lifts a lot and he’s like, Oh, I think I need to lose weight.
[00:02:35] And I was like, Oh, I don’t think you need to do that. So I’m addressing kind of all that in this episode.
[00:02:40] So why does VO2max matter for runners is the first section. VO2max is one of the key performance limiters for distance running. One of them, there are two others, arguably three. The other one is lactate threshold. And that is actually way more important in the performance. after the five K. So 10 K half marathon, marathon is your lactate threshold.
[00:03:01] And then there’s running economy is a huge one. And you can get that better with form drills and, you know, stride and all that stuff, optimizing all that. So VO two max is important to a limit and a higher VO two max does equal more aerobic power.
[00:03:16] That means you will be.
[00:03:17] more aerobic, which means you can run easier and faster without bringing up lactate. We don’t want lactate too much. Lactate lactate is actually good because it is energy, but I’m not going to talk about that in this.
[00:03:27] You can check out the video on tempo running up here where we talk about lactate and lactate production and how it actually is beneficial in certain zones.
[00:03:34] And also VO two max training influences lactate clearance and endurance. So without getting too much in the weeds of lactate, lactate is a by product of when you start burning fat. too many carbs. So after you go aerobic, you become anaerobic and you start burning glycogen for or carbs for energy. And when you do that, the byproduct or the exhaust fumes, to put it better, is that lactate is produced in the pyruvate cycle.
[00:04:01] I won’t go too much into exercise science, running science, but the lactate gets produced and it is actually Good. If you can keep the lactate levels low enough. So as long as you’re moving around, you’re always producing some sort of lactate. And especially when you’re running, the lactate is really low, but you don’t want it to be high and it’s measured in millimoles.
[00:04:20] And I will kind of get into that later on, but I wanted you to understand how lactate works and running at a low heart rate, gets you used to running with a little bit of lactate running at a moderate heart rate. So zone two, zone three, that gets you running with a little bit more lactate and then cycling it.
[00:04:33] for energy. So your body actually in the pyruvate cycle cycles it for energy, which leads to the next point. Mistake runners make with VO two max workouts.
[00:04:42] So mistakes that runners, including this guy, Brenton makes with VO two max workouts is that his intervals are too short or they’re too long.
[00:04:50] Therefore the rest periods don’t match up with the workout and the intent to actually stimulate the adaptations and stressors from the VO two max zone. So it’s training at and possibly training at the wrong intensity. So I actually haven’t really been like doing a bit of advising and I’m actually going deeper into his, interval sessions because I thought they were pretty tight.
[00:05:11] But now I’m like, is he actually doing them, you know, in the most optimal way? And yes, getting out there and doing something is better than nothing. That’s why a lot of people do one kilometer or, you know, three minutes on two minutes off, whatever, like that’s way better than nothing. It gets you used to going out there, get your fit, but we’re trying to really optimize.
[00:05:27] He needs to go sub three. So we need to start dialing in a lot of things and his VO two max workouts can be more optimal. So what I see a lot of clubs doing, and it’s just these group sessions is that they do these. These intervals that I don’t understand, like I, you know, I’m reading all the books. I’ve got certifications.
[00:05:42] I’ve talked to coaches. I’ve been a track athlete. You know, I know what to prescribe to invoke the right stressors to improve your VO2 max and those workouts aren’t be done. So the example is a lot of people do one K, you know, five by one K, eight by one K on with like two minute rest.
[00:06:00] And I’m like, Huh? Then I’m like, what’s the intensity? And the, and there’s really no specific intensity. So it actually ends up being a kind of tempo run with, I’d say probably a bit too long of a rest. And then we also aren’t actually in VO two max long enough. So what I would adjust instead I do, it’s called the Norwegian protocol, which is actually a Jack Daniels who’s the godfather of VO two max and he has the VDOT calculator,
[00:06:23] which I did an episode on right here and how to use the VDOT score to help you with your training and your racing paces.
[00:06:29] But I digress on that. So it’s the four by four. So you do four minutes, four sets of four minutes at your current 5k fitness. Now I’m going to break that down. So current 5k fitness is what your 5k pace is. If you’ve done a 5k time trial, or you can run it through the VDOT calculator, which check that link out before.
[00:06:49] Now don’t do what. You’re what you want your 5k time to be in 12 weeks because then you’re stretching. You need to do what your 5k fitness is at that pace. And that pace is there’s a range of probably about 10 to 20 seconds per kilometer, or I’d say 25 to 40 seconds per mile. You can be on the lower range, the slower end and still get the adaptations, but we don’t want to be too low because then we’re just doing a broken temple run with too much, rest and we’re not actually getting the VO two max and the VO two max session will actually help us with lactate clearance, which will help us with the marathon.
[00:07:20] So I would adjust that to be, I’d start at three minutes on and then three minutes off one week. Next week I do three and a half minutes or four minutes on three minutes off next week, five minutes on. Next week, five and a half minutes. If you’re fast, I would stop at five minutes if you’re a slower runner, but if you’re a faster runner, you can run a 5k in sub 20 minutes.
[00:07:41] You can do five and a half minutes on three minutes off. You need that rest to get the benefits from the VO two max workout. Now you can also flip it and we can chop this a bunch of different ways you can do, at your 5k. Current 5k fitness. You can do
[00:07:54] 12 by 400, which I have done an episode on check that out.
[00:07:57] One of my favorite workouts, to be honest, and a exercise physiologist and scientist, Mike trees, he prescribed it. Jack Daniels prescribes it. All the pros do it. This workout, you could do 16 by 400. You can do 20 by 400. If you do more 10k work, even half marathon work, if you’re very, very advanced and very elite, you can do that.
[00:08:16] But I would start at eight by. 400s, even six by 400 if you’ve never done it before. And what you’re doing is you’re doing half the rest. So if you can do them comfortably in, I can do them in 80 seconds comfortably, sometimes 75, 77 seconds. My rest is about half. So it’s 40 seconds rest and I do 12 of them.
[00:08:33] So I’m not going that fast. Like it’s actually, it’s comfortably hard. I started at seven and I ended at eight, eight and a half. A lot of people either do them too fast or too slow. And then they’re zapped by the fifth, six, one of 12. And they’re like, Oh, I couldn’t finish it. It’s like, okay. No, we, this is not a 400s all out and then you have three, four minute rest.
[00:08:50] That’s a totally different workout. That’s an anaerobic workout. This is actually a VO2 max aerobic workout disguised as a speed workout because you actually get to get some fast turnover, short rest. So 80 seconds, a minute 20 on run, feeling pretty good. Make sure my heart rate VO2 max zone. That’s another thing.
[00:09:07] So my heart rate VO2 max starts about 170, 171. I want to make sure I’m running fast enough to get it up there. Usually in the summer right now, I can get it up there and then 40 seconds to do a nice little jog, walk. Boom. Repeat. Do that 12 times. You get in this nice rhythm because it’s a nice circular track.
[00:09:22] You can modify it. You could do 300 350s if you’re not fit enough or you’re tapering for a race. Or if I’m doing longer stuff, I actually might do four fifties, five hundreds. Uh, I can even do six hundreds, even do eight hundreds. There’s all these different ways, but just start with 12 by 400 and then you could figure it out.
[00:09:37] And that’s, that’s, those two are like kind of two different. on different dynamic ends, VO two max workouts that you can do to improve your VO two max.
[00:09:47] So that was basically a combination of the mistakes that runners make with VO two max workouts and how to structure it all together.
[00:09:53] Again, I like to use power and heart rate. And pacing with these intervals, a combination of all three and effort. So it’s four metrics. So if you have a power meter, Garmin has them, they’re pretty decent. Stride is probably the best one. Coros Coros is decent, but they’re all algorithms based on your wrist moving and, , the accelerometer and how it moves.
[00:10:11] Whereas stride actually is getting your steps and it knows, and it’s got a much more accurate. Algorithm, I would say, heart rate. Obviously you want to make sure you’re in the zone. That’s pretty much all I look at. I want to make sure I don’t go too high or too low, but I don’t really care about it outside that pace.
[00:10:24] If I’m on the track, I’m not worried, but obviously if I’m on a outside on a road, I’m doing it on the road, the workout, I want to make sure I’m in the right pace and effort. Does it feel like a seven ish when I start? And does it feel like an eight, eight and a half when I end each set, each full rep? So that’s kind of how, how I judge it all, which leads me to the next section.
[00:10:42] zone to work and its role in VO two max training. So building a bigger aerobic engine supports your VO two max work and vice versa. Doing VO two max work gives you a bigger aerobic engine so you can actually stay at a lower heart rate doing easier work longer in your races, all races from even the 400 meter, 800 meter, obviously 5k marathon, ultra marathons, all of them use aerobic and you want to stay aerobic as long as possible before your heart rate starts creeping, which it will later in the race
[00:11:10] so my issue with the test that he did, which I’ll go over the data and I’ll kind of get into a bit more of the, the weeds of the, the data and the issues that we found was that it gave him this really small VO two max zone that was 1 48 heart rate to 1 57, which I was like, huh? And then his zone one was like 1 25 to 1 48 and I was like, huh, that’s on one.
[00:11:32] And I’ve just seen so many different. Heart rate zones with so many different Garmin’s different from Strava, which is different from the, you know, the generic one, which is different from Polar and Coros, blah, blah, blah. So I like to kind of combine heart rate and effort in themselves. I know that’s not right.
[00:11:47] Obviously having exact like. Oh, your lactate is here because he did the lactate threshold test and the VO two max test at the same time. We got some great data. We didn’t get paces though.
[00:12:00] Cause it was actually on this like hardcore ramp. Like it was probably like ramped up a treadmill up to like 10, 12%.
[00:12:06] And I got a lot of data, but it also suggested that he, his heart rate spikes when the effort gets too high or the pace or the speed gets too high. And it showed that he had a weakness in his zone two running. And he actually doesn’t do a lot of zone two running. And for him, his own two running is actually, slower than marathon pace.
[00:12:26] So there’s proper marathon pace for him, which is going to be a sub three hour, which is six 50, six 45 minutes per.
[00:12:34] which is about four 15 minutes per kilometer. I got to go between two. I’m American. We live here in Sydney, Australia, so I’m always bouncing between the two for everyone,
[00:12:40] but with his zone two, he wasn’t doing that work that would support it, so it actually would push it up and that’s the high zone to work that would keep his heart rate low for longer. And he’d learn how to. clear out lactate, use the lactate for energy in that high zone two zone, which I spend a lot of time in.
[00:12:58] I love high zone two. It actually does the least amount of damage on your body physiologically. But once you start getting faster, you actually do more damage. So you need to be careful. And that’s kind of one of those good problems that pros have. They can run so fast in a low heart rate. Whoa, you know, like, Whoa, as me, it’s like, I got too much money.
[00:13:15] How do I spend it? But it is a thing that you can train. It does take years. And once he starts training that he’ll actually have significantly faster heart rate. marathon times because he can go faster with a lower heart rate.
[00:13:24] Everything pushes up. Everything pulls up. So him doing this test
[00:13:28] it actually validated one of my theories that he needs to do more zone two work. And we’re going to start programming more of that in now.
[00:13:35] Next section, the role of weight and strength. So he wanted to lose weight so he could run faster is what he said. And I was like, don’t do that right now.
[00:13:42] At least wait till next year. He wants to do, I think two or three marathons this year. If he doesn’t get a sub three as like multiple goes at it and chances, but his power to weight ratio is actually going to be thrown off because even though VO two max is based on weight and oxygen, if he loses weight, technically I’ll have a faster VO two max, but he doesn’t have body fat.
[00:14:00] Like he doesn’t have excess body fat. He’s all muscle.
[00:14:03] This dude is jacked. And it’s like, For him to lose weight, he’s going to have to lose muscle, which will probably make him slower when he runs faster, because he won’t be able to put that same power out, which also could expose him to being more vulnerable to injuries.
[00:14:15] If he’s not lifting as much, doesn’t have as much protein, doesn’t have as much muscle to protect the joints and the soft tissue and the connective tissue and all that stuff, the ligaments cartilage, like. he may be injured. So it’s like work with the body. Nick Bear, Nick Barre, the kind of hybrid athlete that’s out there on YouTube.
[00:14:31] He has a supplement. It’s like he dude is running a two 36 marathon and he’s absolutely jacked. Should not be doing that. He runs like a four 35 mile. This dude is fast. I think he did a nine hour Ironman. I could be wrong on that, but he is way, way fast at the endurance aerobic stuff then then a big dude like him should be.
[00:14:49] So he’s worked with his body and I was like, I think you need to work with your body versus trying to lose weight and use that. That should be the last thing that you work on like next year. I think running economy, obviously improving his VO two max, doing more specific lactate. tolerance sessions, lactate threshold sessions, lactate clearance sessions, high zone two tempo runs like there’s so much more you could do a lot more high zone two runs.
[00:15:11] I think he could do that, which leads to the six section
[00:15:14] race day strategy. So he ran all of this through chat GPT, which I love. Actually it was a deep seek, the new one, deep seek, R1, the Chinese one. And it actually gave him a lot of good feedback. So I’m actually hybrid coaching him. I’m like advising him and telling him what to put into the AIs to then give him information back.
[00:15:32] And he’s programming using AI to program his, . So I’m not doing the
[00:15:34] brain heavy stuff. And he’s doing more of the, he’s using AI to do more of that, like sitting down, programming, adapting to his life type stuff that. I was like, I really don’t want to do so.
[00:15:45] This is great because it actually gave them race day strategy of negative splitting. I use that all the time, but giving that strategy to a lot of runners, I’ve found they go, I don’t want to start off too slow. Cause then I won’t make it up, but they don’t trust the process. So I’ve been negative splitting pretty much my whole life.
[00:16:01] It has one downside, which is you might leave some time on the table because you might go out too slow. But. I always have a great time negative splitting versus if I try to go out exactly at the pace and then I blow up or I try to go out too fast and I blow up, I have a horrendous time and I don’t make my time.
[00:16:15] So I’d rather leave a little bit on the table. I love my race and it was fun. But for him, if he negative splits in his training, he actually will be banking energy and banking time, which actually works because we could then stay aerobic longer. He has fast twitch muscles similar to me. He’s extremely muscular.
[00:16:32] So that means his aerobic, slow twitch muscles fatigue faster. , that is a fact, which means he needs to do more training and more racing slow, so slow. So we’ll be doing like five seconds per kilometer, 10, 15 seconds per mile slower. And the beginning, the first few miles kilometers, and then we’ll get right where he needs to go and then we’ll get a bit faster.
[00:16:49] So about probably at the 18 mile mark, we’ll be hitting slightly faster than the pace we want to be at. And hopefully we have built up enough time,
[00:16:58] Been aerobic enough to where he’s not building up too much lactate, and then we can have a kick for the last five, six miles, 10 kilometers.
[00:17:04] Let’s see what happens. It’s all good in theory,
[00:17:06] so starting slow and negative splitting leads to great performance in a race and great performance in the longterm.
[00:17:18] Which leads to the last point over training versus overreaching. So I actually sat back and thought about.
[00:17:23] that he’s running a really high heart rate when he’s doing marathon paced efforts or marathon paced training and it’s much higher than I would be comfortable doing like he’s quite in zone zone four touching zone five during his marathon paced effort we’re blaming on the heat because it is pretty hot right now here in Australia Sydney Australia and hopefully it’ll be cooler as we get closer to marathon but I was thinking about it.
[00:17:45] I was like, if he’s doing these sustained efforts three times a week, week on week, month on month, and he’s doing this year on year, like he’s gonna burn himself out. So he’s going to touch overreaching, which is what we want. Overreaching is great, but overtraining is what we don’t want. And they are very close cousin sisters and
[00:18:02] overtraining looks just like overreaching at times because. What happens is
[00:18:06] when you overreach, which is good, you stress your body out, you rest, recover, come back one, two, three days. Go back again and you’re stronger. This is what you want. Or you could do a whole week where you like overreaching.
[00:18:17] It’s like, Oh, I’m really tired. You come back the next week. You have kind of a weak recovery where you back things down a bit and you come back. Now when you over train, you feel great. Cause your sympathetic system, which is your fight or flight system is like, yo, I’m going to take care of you, make you healthy and get through all this.
[00:18:32] And then what happens is it gives you this boost for about a few days a week, two weeks for some people. And they think they’re like, Oh, actually improving. And what happened was your sympathetic system kicked in and now you actually are going way past the limit. You’re way into the red zone and you hit over overtraining.
[00:18:49] And the problem with overtraining that I read was you don’t know you’re overtraining until you know you’re overtraining. It’s like calling a recession. Like you don’t know it’s a recession until it’s already been a recession. And then I had it twice. It was horrendous. The second time, uh, you waking up, four or five times a night.
[00:19:06] You wake up and you’re like, I can’t sleep anymore. Like you’ll just wake up after like six, six and a half hours of sleep. You’re like, I can’t sleep anymore. Even though you don’t feel refreshed, you are tired all the time. I’ll do an easy run and I feel tired. I couldn’t do long runs. I couldn’t do hard runs.
[00:19:19] I was able to do luckily zone two runs short and lift. And that was fine. But everything else, like I had to back everything down for two months and I lost a lot of fitness in there. I was maintaining fitness, but I lost a lot. And that was really frustrating because I was the most fit I’d ever been for 5k.
[00:19:36] But over training, overreaching. That’s why you need to train the zone two system, kind of going over everything. And if you can train the zone two system to be really efficient. You’re high zone two, you then can train at a faster pace longer and you won’t then get all the free radicals and the stress hormones and quarters all floating around that happens when you’re training at a high heart rate when you’re all up in high zone three zone four all the time, you burn yourself out, you get sick a lot.
[00:20:01] What else happens? You just constantly just feeling fatigued. It’s not great. So there’s a lot to this.
[00:20:08] We went over the role of weight. Okay. and having, trying to lose weight and keep your VO2 max and keep your speed pretty difficult, especially when you don’t have too much excess fat to lose. I’d say not to do it again, zone two, the importance of it, how to structure VO2 max work workouts perfectly or properly, I’d say, and mistakes that people make in their VO2 max workouts, the different polarizing sides and why VO2 max matters a lot.
[00:20:30] It’s not everything, but it is something.
[00:20:32] And if you do balance training, you will get better. A lot of the adaptations from VO two max from lactate system and from running economy. Make sure you do plyos form drills, you lift and you can increase your running economy, get more efficient running economy, run more efficiently.
[00:20:45] It’s free speed. All right
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