I'm not talking about cheating a metric. VO2 Max is correlated with longevity but it's likely just a proxy for several other factors. I'm sure I could boost my VO2 Max by a few points if I focused on training that but I'm skeptical whether that would make me healthier than maximizing performance over longer efforts. We just don't have clear data to say one way or the other.
I would say your race performance is different than the goal of increasing longevity. What matters more is how important vo2 max is to longevity.