At 77, marathon world record holder Jeannie Rice tested at a VO2 max of 47.9, the highest ever recorded for a woman over 75. For cyclists, her story rewrites the ceiling on what your aerobic engine can do at any age.
Most riders assume their VO2 max is on a slow slide after 40. Rice is proof that assumption is wrong.
At 77 years old, she just registered the highest VO2 max ever recorded for a woman aged 75 or older.
Her aerobic engine tests the same as an average 25-year-old.
She is a runner, not a cyclist. But the physiology she has built is exactly what every endurance cyclist chases.
Her story is not about lucky genes. It is about four decades of stubborn training, and the habits behind it translate almost one-to-one to the bike.
Rice was born in South Korea in 1948 and started running at 35 to lose five vacation pounds.
Forty years later, she has finished 130+ marathons, holds W70 and W75 world records, and has beaten every male runner in her age group more than once.
She has also set world age-group records at 1,500m, 5,000m, and 10,000m. That range, from a mile to 26.2, is almost unheard of at any age.
In April 2024, days after a 3:33:27 London Marathon world record, Rice traveled to Loughborough University in Britain for a full physiology lab.
The findings were published in the Journal of Applied Physiology in early 2025 as a case report by Van Hooren, Balamouti, and Zanini.
Her VO2 max clocked in at 47.9 mL·kg⁻¹·min⁻¹. Her max heart rate hit 180 bpm.
For context, most untrained women aged 70 to 79 test 45% to 65% lower. A 25-year-old woman averages roughly the same 47 range.
VO2 max is the maximum volume of oxygen your body can pull from the air and burn to make power. On the bike, it is the ceiling on how much sustainable watts you can produce.
When your VO2 max goes up, your FTP almost always follows. Your Zone 2 pace feels easier.
Your climbs feel shorter.
Here is the punch line from the Rice case study. Her running economy was actually modest for a world-class athlete.
What made her competitive was not efficiency, it was raw aerobic capacity.
Translated to cycling: she would be the rider whose bike fit is nothing special, whose position is not aero-optimized, but who still drops the group because her engine is so oversized it does not matter.
That is quietly powerful. Because engine is trainable.
Aero position is a one-time fix.
The most impressive number in the paper is not her VO2 max. It is her fractional utilization.
At her marathon race pace, she sustained 88% of her VO2 max. At her lactate turnpoint, she hit 92%.
On the bike, that is the equivalent of a 58-year-old amateur holding 92% of VO2 max at threshold. Most riders lose that ability first, long before their raw VO2 max drops.
Which means the biggest myth about aging as a cyclist is backwards. You do not lose your ceiling first.
You lose your ability to sit near the ceiling.
Strip away the medals and Rice's routine is stunningly simple. Here is what she actually does, and the direct cycling equivalent.
Rice logs about 50 miles a week, every week. In a marathon build she pushes it to 60.
She has held that block, in her words, for 40 years.
On the bike, that is 8 to 12 hours a week of steady saddle time, held for decades, with a small bump before a target event.
"A lot of other runners decrease their training as they get older. But I haven’t done that," she said.
That is the whole secret.
Rice does light strength work twice a week, but only from the waist up. Her reasoning is practical.
Her legs get plenty of load from 50 miles of pounding.
Cyclists should copy the mindset, not the split. Your legs are getting hammered on the bike, so the gym should reinforce the areas the bike neglects.
That means core, glutes, and posterior chain. Deadlifts, hip thrusts, single-leg step-ups, and heavy carries do more for your late-ride power than another set of leg extensions.
Rice is a lifelong pescetarian. Her go-to meal is salad with roasted salmon.
Her weight has hovered between 100 and 103 pounds for four decades.
She does not chase trendy diets or track macros.
For cyclists, the parallel is not about being tiny. It is about the discipline of a stable body weight, real food, and no crash cuts.
Rice never had a coach. She joined the North Cleveland Runners Club 41 years ago and picked up almost everything from other members.
Her regular training partners today are in their mid to late 50s.
Twenty years younger, and she keeps up.
The cycling equivalent is your Saturday group ride. Solo intervals during the week, hard group efforts on the weekend, and older riders who refuse to be dropped.
Copying her routine wholesale would be a mistake. Two big reasons.
First, running is weight-bearing. It stimulates bone density in ways cycling never will, which matters far more for a 77-year-old woman than a 47-year-old cyclist.
Second, 50 miles a week of running is a huge cardiovascular stimulus at low speeds.
On the bike, the same duration in Zone 1 would not move the needle on your VO2 max.
Cyclists need more intensity. Because we are not fighting gravity every step, we have to manufacture the stress with intervals and hard group rides.
That is where the Rice playbook needs a translator. Keep her consistency, but add the sharp edges cycling demands.
Our full breakdown on how to increase VO2 max so your hard efforts feel easier walks through the exact VO2 intervals worth building your week around.
You do not need Rice's genetics to steal what makes her fast. The transferable rules are simple.
Ride most weeks in the 8 to 12 hour range, and refuse to drop below it after a birthday.
Add one to two short, hard sessions every week: 4x4 minute intervals at VO2 power, or 5x5 at just under.
Lift twice a week, targeting everything the saddle ignores. Eat like a boring adult who does not trend-chase.
Ride with a group that keeps you honest.
Do that for five years, not five months. That is the actual sport.
Rice is not the only late-life record breaker rewriting what aging looks like. On the cycling side, our profile of Centenarian Ruth’s walking and cycling routine for longevity shows the same principle in a rider who is twenty-three years older than Rice.
Together, they are proof of a truth the physiology labs keep confirming.
Endurance capacity does not have to fall off a cliff at 60, or 70, or even 100.
What tends to fall off is consistency. Riders quit, cut back, and let a birthday do the negotiating.
Rice did not. She started running to lose five pounds.
She ended up owning the highest VO2 max ever recorded in a woman her age.
The point of Rice's story is not that you should try to be Jeannie Rice. She is a statistical outlier and she knows it.
The point is that her routine is almost insulting in its simplicity. Ride a lot.
Lift a little. Eat real food.
Show up for 40 years.
There is no magic supplement in her lab report. No breakthrough interval protocol.
Just fractional utilization built by refusing to skip weeks.
If you are 40, or 50, or 60, the science says your VO2 max is not on rails to the floor. It is on rails to whatever you decide to train it to.
Rice picked the ceiling of a 25-year-old. That option was always on the menu.
She just ordered it.
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