AeT Drift Test vs Lab Vo2 Max 10/18/24 Need Help Interpreting

Taking advice from Steve in another thread a week back, I found a local university lab (George Mason SMARTLAB) doing Max VO2 Tests – Gas Exchange Test.  Of course I shared Evoke’s Lab instructions and got a “meh” and they wanted to follow their standard protocol, so I did not get much warmup.   I guess there is a professor running the Lab, but I had a technician today (and MS grad), before signing up for the test asked twice if they can establish the VT1 (proxy for AeT) in addition to VT2/Threshold and VO2 Max.  They said “yes”, but their results are perplexing and technician could not articulate VT1, only the very basic stuff.

I’m sharing all my results below in case anyone else runs into this issue to help better understand.   Hoping Evoke/Steve can help here, I really want to be training in the right threshold.  Thank you in advance for any insight!!!

So, their Anaerobic Threshold AnT rating of 168 HR for me was spot on to my measurements using standard outside threshold test, I routinely have maxed around that for 45 min run and matches my peak HR 1 hr in TrainingPeaks.  So all good on AnT.  VO2 max came in at 51.2, although I really didn’t push crazy at the very end, kind of gave up.  Their “RER” metric is 1 at around 169 which is I think a good proxy for AnT per my research.

Well their proxy for AeT doesn’t make any sense to me – they are saying top of my zone 2 is 126 (70% max 181 HR per their model) and given all their data elements (which I think is good) I don’t know how to make my own interpretation.  I took deep dive into the metrics on their sheet today but still not sure what to be looking for.

Lastly, to finish the day, I did a HR Drift test on a 400m track per Evoke instructions which resulted in a 152 HR for 1 HR with 2.55% drift.   I have routinely thought of my AeT as around 150 and the drift test just confirmed, so I have no idea why these lab results don’t match other than Steve’s usual concerns about lack of warmup and process of how they run their test.  I think they have all the tools which is a shame!

Looking at the test results, do they point to AeT at 126 or more closer to 150?  I can run that 152 and it feels “moderately difficult” I put it as RPE4/5.  I just ran Grindstone 100k (13 hrs) and had HR of 142.  126 seems REALLY low.