Don’t know if this is something I’ve missed when trading about PL’s.
I did an achievable endurance ride today at 4.1 when my current PL was 4.8, it’s been about a week since I did a similar TR ride. I expected my PL to not change as I rated it as easy, but it dropped down to that of the latest workout.
Is this normal behaviour? I expected that it would stay the same and only decay if not riding often (I’ve ridden outside as well, unstructured).
Unstructured rides don’t impact your PLs but I agree that sounds strange. Maybe check in with the excelent TR support team?
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This could be the decay rate of Progression Levels, but those are complicated depending upon the full scope of your training. 4.8 to 4.1 is totally normal.
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Yeah agreed it seems like a reasonable decay, but for it to happen after I’d completed a ride, rather than being up to date beforehand.
Technically then today’s workout would have been on the upper limit of achievable but I wouldn’t have been aware!
I had been thinking about that but hadn’t done the research to find the post. Does seem like inconsistent info from TR… Would be great for TR to address this directly as there may be subtleties that support what we’re experience in PL degradation rates.
Happy to clarify, that chart is a general guideline of how long significant declines (ie, detraining) can take after stopping training completely. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t lose the equivalent of a few progression level points in the interim.
I would encourage anyone who thinks their levels are changing in unexpected ways to reach out to support. Level decay should generally match the principles outlined in that blog post and we definitely want to look closely at any instance where things seem amiss!
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On the other side of things, inside rides excludes all the micro-coasting for traffic, stop lights, cornering and descending, etc of outside rides. To say nothing of cafe stops. 
