Sorry to derail this thread, but a 78 VO2 max and an FTP of 380W after two months of training? If these are accurate I think you missed your calling to be a pro cyclist.
Edit: I misread the comment. I thought you said you had only been cycling for 2 months.
Nice! Are you a bigger rider? I had a theory that larger people had more bone density and therefore skewed results within certain population sets. Because my test was mass market I wondered if more above average weight people took the test and therefore had a higher influence on it. Hopefully you’re not offended by that question 
A VO2 max of 78 for someone mid 40s and not a pro and only 6-8 hours a week. Wow 
I’m 90kg at 180cm and 13% bodyfat, but I’ve always been “dense”. At 21 I weighed 75kg, never touched a weight set, and looked like a skeleton; I did club swimming during that time of my life and could never float, even after taking a full breath. Some people are just thick boned 
I know! I’m a little younger, and need to have a CTL in the 80s to get (i.e. scrape) into the low 60s.
Guess it’s just genetics: I volunteered as a lab rat when at uni (rowing 6 times a week, probably the fittest I’ve ever been in my life) and came out with 68 iirc: I’d guess I could have trained full time and would have maxed out at 70. That some people get those numbers almost straight off the couch is… (he says through gritted teeth) good for them 
39 years of age but will be 40 next month 
I read a lot about Vo2 max and I think it’s a bit more trainable and I think there is some science behind having more muscle and higher Vo2. I’m naturally (and from 15 yrs of strength training) more muscular and so I’m heavier for a cyclist. But while the watts/kg suffers a bit, I think my Vo2 max is higher for it.
I don’t recall having stand out (I played soccer at a decent level but wasn’t winning running or rowing championships) aerobic fitness as a young kid. However, I think consistently doing hard work year in year out (20+ years of doing Vo2 like efforts on a weekly basis) made a huge difference.
But, it’s probably been borderline unhealthy at times as I’ve often ignored signs of overdoing it. Other than multiple injuries (one needing surgery) when I used to run, I got shingles twice in the last few years after working out harder than I should have when I wasn’t sleeping well with a new baby at home.
So, I’m probably a little off mentally when it comes to training and I don’t necessarily recommend it!
That’s actually not the case. The VO2 max number you quoted is weight based (ml/kg*min I think). So it would go down if your weight is higher. So to have a 78 VO2 max at your weight is impressive.
Overall weight for sure but I’m referring to body composition. I looked into that as I was a bit surprised by my lab results so I wanted to understand all the influences on it, and particularly those unique to me. I’m not saying it’s the most important factor but it seems it helps. I recall (feel free to correct me) it having to do with larger muscles having the ability to use more oxygen.
This was one article/study that concluded:
There was a significant relationship between muscle mass and VO2max for both groups (p<0.05). After correcting for muscle mass, the difference in cycling VO2max between groups disappeared (p>0.05).
The Effect of Aging on Relationships between Lean Body Mass and VO2max in Rowers - PMC.
While I had seen my garmin track my Vo2 max up to as high as 81 I was skeptical that was accurate. However I had always been able to hang with and often beat climbers on hill climbs although I was the always notably the heaviest rider. But to clarify, my body fat has prob been between 9-11% on a DEXA scan over the last several years which might be more like 6-8% on a traditional test, so I don’t want the suggest overweight riders have higher Vo2 maxes!) .
And I’m not as muscular as I used to be (my DEXA scan had me at 20.8 kg / meter squared) and 76% higher than the population set. However amongst cyclists I have to believe higher than 99%.
I often find my big limiter is ingesting enough calories as I am working at a much higher rate so while shorter events are good for me I would be destroyed and underperform on longer stuff.
Yea I gotcha. I would think it’s “working” muscle mass more than overall muscle mass that plays the biggest role. It’s why rowers and cross country skiers can achieve higher VO2 max numbers than cyclists. Because they’re using most/all of their muscles rather than cyclists using just the legs. I was more just pointing out that the VO2 number you gave does take weight into account rather than just an absolute value. So it’s more like W/kg rather than W. Either way, you have really impressive numbers and I am quite envious sitting here with my mediocre genetics 
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Adding only for interests sake: There has been some recent research showing that chronic hyponatremia is associated with a significant increased risk of osteoporosis. Which makes intuitive sense as bone is a big sodium reserve in your body, and osteoclast activity is stimulated by hyponatremia.
At the same time, chronic hyponatremia is fairly common in endurance athletes. Somewhere around 5% or greater in some cohort studies.
I have some notion that with the osteoporosis we see in cyclists who have spent many years training at high volume, chronic hyponatremia may be playing a larger factor in driving it than we think, than just the things like low testosterone or lack of weight-bearing activities.
This is just personal opinion though, and in no way represents established medical consensus.
Can you provide references to these studies?
There’s one which is a prospective cohort in runners doing a marathon where they were trying to measure the incidence of EAH… but as part of their methodology they measured pre-race Na levels. I can’t find that one right now, but the prevalence was 5-10% I think in that one. I’m pretty sure it was published in the 201x’s. 2011, 2016 or 2017?
Heres one in rowers which showed an almost 50% prevalence of hyponatremia by 3wk into a training camp.
There are some other too, I’m just not at home right now, so these are the only ones I recall off the top of my head. I think you can probably use these as a starting point to find the other ones.
They are somewhat annoying to find because most search terms in PubMed lead you down the acute hyponatremia hole. I recall narrowing search criteria to prospective cohort studies made more relevant one come up as then you can look at pre-event sodium levels in the ones that measured this.
That actually says the opposite of what I was saying:
Based on data pooled from 27 separate studies, encompassing 2262 participants with a verifiable pre-race blood [Na+] measurement, only 0.8% (19/2262) presented with hyponatremia prior to race start.9–35 These pooled data represent blood [Na+] measurements collected in 7 countries and between 5 minutes to 72 hours pre-competition. This 0.8% also includes 16 questionable below-normal [Na+] values possibly confounded by fingerstick hemolysis29 and/or outdated techniques.25 Thus, baseline (pre-event) hyponatremia in recreational exercisers appears to fall within the expected range for a normal population distribution (1%-2%), and at a frequency well below what has been observed in individuals presenting for non-hyponatremia related clinical treatment situations36 or in hospitalized patients.37
Your was elite I believe. Shows difference of incidence between elite and recreational.
Yeah I have my own reasons for believing what I believe on this topic which are kind of nerdy. I just didn’t want people thinking that’s these expert consensus guidelines agreed with me.
I guess I disagree with the authors’ conclusions for a number of reasons:
My conclusion from this study would’ve been that training camps may be associated with transient hyponatremia and the behavior of the athletes during a training camp should be investigated to figure out the cause.
Yes those are all good points.
My follow up point would be that even in athletes who are never significantly hyponatremic during training… where did that sodium come from to maintain normal values? For heavy sweaters doing 20h a week, they may need like 10-15g of table salt a day to maintain losses. It’s typically coming from bone resorption if they fall behind on intake at all.
Regardless, this is all hypothetical at this point, so it’s definitely possible (probable?) I’m wrong. I just think it’s an interesting notion that hasn’t really been investigated yet that I’ve seen.