VO2 Max
 

I read where they take the VO2 Max novice racers, to see if it would be worth training them for something like the TDF and if they could more or less hold there own. I also know from running, years ago, that you could get more oxygen in your body the longer you keep training. Doesn't the same thing go from riding? I find it hard to believe that they would sideline a potential racer just from a VO2 Max reading. I really dont know what it's all about, but trying to learn.

The reason I ask, is that I have asthma and I would think it would help me build my lungs up. Or get more oxygen in my body. I'm not going racing, but don't you think it would help?

As I understand it, some folks with have high VO2 max readings naturally. Lance Armstrong apparently had a spectacularly high reading from the beginning. It sounds like someone might test beginning racers to see if they have the makings of the next Lance, which I guess gives them a basis to suggest more training.

I also understand that VO2 max increases with training. The average shmoe, like you and me and 99% of the rest of the world, will improve, but Lance on half a lung probably will still beat us. Such is life.

As a fellow asthma sufferer, I, too, have pondered this question.
Asthma, of course, is more about the airways leading to the lungs -the bronchials- than the lungs themselves. The airways constrict from irritation -and that can come from many, many causes- and air can't get *to* the lungs. the lungs are fine but they're starving, for want of a better image. I can trigger an attack if I laugh too hard for too long. That's why I'm such a crank, I can't afford to laugh ;)

But I thought if I kept riding, I'd have to improve. I also get allergy shots every 3 weeks and, because of my asthma -and the fact that I'm only working on about 60-70% of normal lung capacity, at best- I have to huff into the peak flow meter and "pass the test" before they'll give me my shots. In the year and a half that I've been doing this, my peak flow hasn't changed appreciably at all. Still 60-70%, give or take. Depressing, ain't it?