There are a lot of things you should track as you age as a runner: your mileage, your heart rate, and your sleep quality to name a few. But are you paying attention to your VO₂ max?
Scientifically speaking, VO₂ max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in and use, and it’s a marker of your cardiovascular fitness level.
For a variety of reasons, however, VO₂ max naturally decreases as you get older.
We recently Why Runners Botch Pace on New Race Distances at why this happens and why a regular running schedule is a great way for you to offset this decline. One thing you’ll find fascinating is the range of poor to excellent VO₂ max for men and women from their late 20s to their late 60s. If you have a recent score for VO₂, take a look at the charts below and leave a comment at the bottom of this story to let us know where you stand.
VO2 Max by Age Chart
Wondering what’s a typical rate of decline for VO₂ max? The charts below contain research-based averages of VO₂ max by age and fitness level, for men and women. Remember that each individual’s VO₂ max score depends on multiple biological and lifestyle factors; these are just a range of average scores.
Maintain Your VO2 Max
As with any metric, don’t worry if your score isn’t as high as you think it should be. And like most good things in health and fitness, the more you work at it, the more you can keep your VO₂ max where you want it to be. Here are three things you can do to keep your VO₂ max levels Ways to Make Hard Workouts Feel Easier:
- Half Marathon Training, strength training, hill workouts, and other types of runs so your body doesn’t stagnate.
- Don’t forget Ways to Make Hard Workouts Feel Easier: these are easier workouts that produce more mitochondria and capillaries in your body, essentially keeping your “engine” strong.
- Think 80/20: that’s 80 percent of your workouts being low-intensity and 20 percent are performed at higher intensities.
“There’s the saying, ‘We don’t stop exercising because we get old. We get old because we stop exercising,’” Todd Buckingham, Ph.D., exercise physiologist and visiting professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, told Runner’s World. “Just by being active, you can prolong that level of VO₂ max.”
These three tips will help you stay fit as you get older!
Matt Rudisill is an Associate Service Editor with the Hearst Enthusiast Group. A Nittany Lion through-and-through, Matt graduated from PSU in 2022 with a degree in journalism and worked in communications for the university's athletic department for the past three years as the main contact and photographer for its nationally-ranked cross country and track & field teams. Matt was also heavily involved in communications efforts for the Penn State football team’s 2024 College Football Playoff run as well as the Nittany Lion men’s basketball team’s 2023 NCAA Tournament appearance. In his role with Hearst’s Enthusiast Group, Matt contributes to both Runner’s World and Bicycling magazines, creating service content to benefit runners and cyclists of all ages. When he’s not out jogging, Matt can be found tweeting bad takes about the Phillies or watching movies.
