Garmin has published its annual global running and cycling data reports, drawing on activity logged in Garmin Connect by millions of users across 2025, and the headline finding will surprise no coach: training volume and VO2 max move together. Across the dataset, runners who covered more ground tended to record higher estimated VO2 max values, with the average for all Garmin runners sitting at 50. The relationship was even cleaner on the cycling side, where successive weekly-volume bands returned steadily higher averages, a pattern that lends weight to the simple message that consistent aerobic work raises the ceiling.
The distribution of weekly mileage is itself instructive. The most popular band among Garmin runners was 9 to 16 kilometres a week, accounting for close to 40 per cent of users, followed by 17 to 32 kilometres at around 28 per cent. Only about 7 per cent logged 33 to 48 kilometres weekly, and just 3 per cent exceeded 49 kilometres. In other words, the overwhelming majority of recreational runners train on relatively modest volume, a useful corrective to a social-media culture that can make 80-kilometre weeks feel like the baseline rather than the exception.
Perhaps the most encouraging trend was the rise of complementary training. Garmin reported a 23 per cent increase in users who recorded both a run and a strength session in the same week, alongside roughly 13 per cent more indoor runs and 3 per cent more outdoor runs year on year. The growing willingness to pair running with resistance work mirrors a decade of sports-science consensus that strength training supports running economy and reduces injury risk, and it suggests the message is finally filtering down from elite practice to everyday athletes.
The caveats matter, and they are significant. This is observational data from a self-selecting population of people who own and consistently wear a particular brand of device, so it cannot establish that more mileage causes higher fitness rather than fitter people simply choosing to run more. Wrist- and chest-based VO2 max estimates are modelled figures, not laboratory measurements, and their accuracy varies with the quality of heart-rate and pace data. Aggregate trends of this kind describe correlations across a large group; they say little about what any individual runner should do next.
Read with those limits in mind, the report still reinforces a durable set of principles. Aerobic fitness responds to consistent, progressively applied volume rather than to occasional heroics; most of the running population thrives on sustainable weekly distances; and strength work is increasingly seen as part of the package rather than an optional extra. None of that is new to exercise physiologists, but seeing it borne out across so vast a sample is a reminder that the unglamorous fundamentals, applied patiently, remain the most reliable route to getting faster.