What is VO2 max pace?
Training Paces
VO2max pace is the one runners most enjoy talking about and most often get wrong. It is narrower, and less important, than the internet suggests.
The short answer
VO2max pace is roughly the pace you could race for 10 to 12 minutes flat out — for most trained runners that is close to 3km race pace, or a little quicker than current 5km pace. It feels like 8 to 9 out of 10. If you are running "VO2max intervals" at a pace you could hold for 25 minutes, you are doing threshold work with a fancier name.
What VO2max pace is for
VO2max is the maximum rate at which you can take in and use oxygen. Training at or near the pace that elicits it does two things: it nudges that ceiling up a little, and — more usefully for most runners — it improves how efficiently you run near your limit, sharpens your mechanics at speed, and teaches you to hold form when it hurts.
That second bunch of benefits is the real prize. Very few adult runners are going to shift their maximum oxygen uptake dramatically. Almost everyone can get meaningfully better at running fast while tired.
How to find it
The most practical way is off a recent race:
- A recent 3km race pace is about right.
- From a 5km time, take about 5 to 15 seconds per kilometre off, more if your 5km is over 25 minutes.
- From a 10km time, take about 15 to 25 seconds per kilometre off.
The effort check is more reliable than the arithmetic. VO2max effort is a pace you could sustain for roughly 10 to 12 minutes if your life depended on it and no longer. Breathing is heavy and rhythmic. Talking is out. Crucially, it should not be a sprint — if you are straining, tightening in the shoulders, or fading badly in the last rep, it is too quick.
How to train it
The classic prescription is intervals of two to five minutes with roughly equal or slightly shorter recovery, accumulating 12 to 25 minutes of work. Think 6 x 3 minutes, 5 x 1000m, 8 x 800m, or 4 x 5 minutes.
The reason for reps of that length is simple: it takes a minute or two of hard running before your oxygen uptake actually gets up near maximum. Short reps of 200m or 400m with long rests never really get you there. They train other things — and there is a place for them — but they are not VO2max work.
Two sessions that do the job
- 5 x 1000m at 3km effort, with 2 to 3 minutes jog recovery. The benchmark session. Every rep the same pace, and the last one is the one that counts.
- 6 x 3 minutes hard, 2 minutes easy jog. Better than the above on hills, trails or anywhere you cannot measure distance honestly.
How much, and when
Less than you think, and later than you think.
VO2max work is expensive. It costs a lot in recovery, it carries the highest injury risk of anything in a distance programme, and its benefits arrive fast and fade fast. That combination means it belongs in a concentrated block — typically four to eight weeks in the specific phase before a goal race — rather than being sprinkled through the whole year.
For most of the athletes I coach, that means once a week during a sharpening block, and either none at all or a light touch of it during a base or early build phase. Threshold work does the heavy lifting for most of the year. VO2max is the polish.
Coach's note
If you are over 40, be more careful with this one, not less. VO2max sessions are where masters runners get hurt — the pace is fast enough to expose a tight calf or an unhappy Achilles, and the recovery cost is higher than it was at 30. That does not mean avoid it. It means fewer of them, more warm-up, and softer surfaces. I would rather a 50-year-old runner did 5 x 3 minutes on the grass at Karori Park than 8 x 400m on the track. The training effect is nearly identical and the risk profile is not.
Where people go wrong
Running the first rep too fast. The session is judged by the last rep, not the first. If rep one is quicker than rep five, you did not run a VO2max session, you ran a fast rep and then survived.
Cutting the recovery. The recovery is not the enemy. It exists so you can run the next rep at the right pace. Shortening it turns a VO2max session into a badly-run threshold session.
Doing it year-round. Twelve months of interval sessions produces a runner who is sharp in April and broken by August. Ask any club how many of their members disappear each winter.
Confusing it with speed. VO2max pace is not sprinting, and strides, hill sprints and short accelerations are a different tool serving a different purpose. Both belong in a programme. They are not interchangeable.
Do you need it at all?
If you are training for a marathon and running 40km a week, probably not much. Your limiter is volume and durability, not your oxygen ceiling.
If you are racing 5km and 10km, or you have been training consistently for years and your progress has stalled, yes — a properly structured block of it will help.
And if you are new to running, leave it alone for now. Build the aerobic base first. There is nothing waiting for you at the top of that ladder that you cannot get more cheaply, and more safely, further down it.
Put a recent 5k time in and get your easy, threshold and interval paces as real numbers.
Open the pace calculator →I coach a small number of runners one-to-one, in Wellington and remotely, and run AW Extra Mile group sessions for beginners at Waitangi Park. Ask me a question if you are not sure which fits.
