Who would do that??? 
Would you be able to better self regulate longer weekend rides with RLGL? I’m think of pushing a two hour ride to three hours, see if that triggers a yellow day, then figure out the “sweet spot” for longer rides on the weekend
@Nate_Pearson I send in the form and am really interested to see what it shows. I’m posting this also here in the forum. Might be easier for discussions.
In August 2023 my second child was born. Sleep since then very poor. A lot of work in business and with the kids. Managed to go on with training for some time. Started to struggle in Sep /Oct 2023 as I moved to speciality I think because have been on MV Polarized before and that have been only 2 days of intensity. Switched plans a couple of times, even switched to the standard low volume. Masters plans have not been available back then. Some time in October I got sick for 6 weeks. Maybe due to that.
Second: Now I’m on MV build at the moment. Have a big race coming in april in mallorca and a week before that for riding there. I know bad choice because I’ll add a lot of fatigue during that week instead of doing a taper. But I’m not that often on the island to miss the opportunity to ride some of my favorite climbs.
I’m adding some volume on top of MV Masters to hopefully withstand the amount of riding end of april a bit better. Some easy running, riding to work, doing longer mountain rides in rouvy instead of a short endurance ride. Also doing strength training 2 times per week for 3 weeks now (Dialed health 30 day beginner course). I feel the fatigue building up and get some symptoms of getting sick. (Might not be trainerroad related, my bigger child is in daycare and everyone seems to get sick right now). But I’m wondering if that shows in rlgl.
Thx
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This is pretty much what I already do using a combo of RPE and Garmin recovery advisor. Will be interesting to see how RLGL compares.
The sweetspot I’m aiming for on a weekend ride is ~48 hour recovery time from garmin, with legs and RPE to match. That normally leaves me able to do a decent ride the next day (garmin advice is to “train normally” once recovery is down to 24 hours). For me, I can hit that sweetspot with a pretty disciplined 3-4 hour ride done mostly in z2, or up to about 2.5 hours riding with a lot of tempo and low end sweetspot but starting mostly under threshold. Anything over 2 hours with a lot of work at Threshold and higher (hitting the hills hard or an unstructured group ride that hits all the zones) tends to push recovery out beyond 48 hours, at which point the next day is either a rest day or a very easy active recovery ride. Similar once I get beyond 4 hours, even if it’s stayed disciplined that tends to push recovery advisor out.
It’s all about context. I ride ~12 hours/week so a 2-3 hour ride isn’t that taxing unless it’s a hard ride. Assume for pros riding 20+ hours/week then a 4-5 hour ride is no big deal unless there’s a lot of efforts in there.
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Thanks for sharing these @Nate_Pearson
I find it a little confusing that people are doing rides on the red days and then the following day is yellow and not red again. I think the team needs to work on the messaging to explain that well. Otherwise, it feels like you’re almost encouraging us to go ahead and ride on red days.
Another thought is that you’re mentioning that people burn out because they do volume that their training history doesn’t support. I’m sure this is true, but on the other hand, how do you get to a point where your training history DOES support the higher volume if you don’t push up beyond your current boundaries. How do you use RLGL to guide this ramp up without overcooking yourself? And that kind of comes back to riding on red days, which makes me wonder if I misunderstand what a red day means in the first place. I would think red means DONT RIDE TODAY, but if I ignore that advice and the next day is yellow, then it all gets confusing.
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If next day (red) intensity is low enough, you still recover enough either to move to ‘yellow’ or even back to normal. For example, according to Garmin, after hard day, 2h at 60% does not add any recovery time for me, while for somebody with less continuous volume off day is truly needed.
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Man thanks really cool to see. I was trying to add the extra volume for the 50 mile MTN Bike race, which is fine but I needed to follow that up with a rest or light recovery spin the next day, instead of doing the next scheduled workout.
Can’t wait for this to roll out. Currently training for Unbound 100 after getting a Lottery pick! Super excited.
I understand that, but that doesn’t change that RLGL told you it was a Red day, you still rode, and apparently, that was a good thing. It’s the messaging on what Red means that I’m recommending needs clarification.
Said differently, I think Red means STOP, not go slow or think before you cross. To me, that’s what Yellow means.
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but I think 3-5hr rides should be something encouraged in plan design. I’m fortunate to have had more time to add volume, and try to do back to back longer rides on the weekend, on a particularly big week i’ll do 2x4hr endurance on the weekend. i don’t get sucked into group riding or lots of racing, and tend limit my hard days to two. I am convinced that TR could make some decent high volume options for people. doing 14-16hrs on avg vs 12hrs/week has done some good things for me over the past year or so. it’s possible to ride more without overtraining and burning out, people are adding more volume because they want to ride more, I think TR is missing a real opportunity to make something to cater to those folks in a better way
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If you go in and increase your weekend hours in your block, won’t your high volume plan modify accordingly, getting you to 14-16 hours?
@Nate_Pearson, I have the same question. I’m not able to really gage my running intensity. Overall, it’s not a lot of time working out, but the impact on joints and muscles is outsized for the time compared to cycling. I’m also an older athlete (53). I’m hoping that the software will have some way of using history and heart rate to rate a run and not have to ask us for subjective input.
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Plan Builder fully supports it, you can use Masters plans and configure each day time allotment.
It is currently configurable up to 24h/week:
- 2x 2h hard days
- 4x 5h easy days
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oh, i no longer sub so I haven’t experienced these changes firsthand, but that’s somewhat encouraging as a step in the right direction
Really really cool. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to record this and upload it.
B/c i know TR gets a lot of flack for prescribing “too much intensity” it’s important context that, I AND I ALONE BUILT THESE BLOCKS. None of these workouts were part of a TR plan. I build on my calendar based upon my goals (sub 3:45 up Haleakala), my work/home schedule and work stress.
Here’s some of my initial reactions/feedback which I hope is helpful for you and the team.
- This is really cool, great job all!
- How do i interpret a “yellow day”? My first thought, “oh this is bad and i should take the day completely off”, yet, when i didn’t and the day was still yellow, i was able to complete workouts. How do i read into that?
- Are yellow and red days for that day only?
- How do i read into multiple yellow days in a row? should i be doing endurance rides only on yellow days, take the day off, maybe hit some low tempo?
- looking over this, it appears that the days in which I can workout (fri, sat, sun) are yellow, so how do i balance the yellow days with progressively overloading the body
from the user perspective, i’d categorize all of these questions as a “teach me how to use the thing”
Thanks!
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@Nate_Pearson How does this work with two a days please?
Might be green before the first session but yellow or red before the second (or yellow to red)
When is the assessment made? After each session, end of previous day?
Thanks.
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Great to hear that runs are considered. I presume that’s HR based - is that looking at different HR zones compared to cycling? Accounting for the fact HR is usually a bit higher running. Or does the AI handle all that stuff…
so in the example provided above, the user had quite a few red days but still had two ftp increases in the period posted. perhaps preventing ftp increases for individuals getting lots of red might be one step to preventing burnout
FTP increases are just that. I don’t want the platform to lie to me or withhold information.
I don’t think the idea is that red days are inherently bad, it’s what you do in response to the red day. Do you do a recovery ride or take the day off, or do you just keep pushing? I hope when I see my history it contains plenty of yellow and red days, and that I adjusted accordingly. Or more likely in my case, I planned to push into the red, knowing I had a rest day or recovery week right after.
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well I think it comes back, as it always does, to interpreting the concept of FTP. I personally see nothing in those lower level sweet spot and threshold workouts which would really warrant an increase in ftp vs allowing the user to keep building tiz in those areas. but that’s my perspective from my own experience
Have you thought about having folks share non cycling activities to take the extra fatigue from that into account? Because I’m lifting heavy in the gym 3x/ week currently, and of course that also contributes to fatigue.
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Call it “Stop-Go”. Short and sweet. Not sure if anyone came up with that before