It seems to be working well for me. I’m 58 years old so I’m on a Master’s plan. RLGL was rolled out while I had covid and I was off the bike for two weeks. I spent the following week doing relatively easy zone 2 rides indoors. I activated RLGL after that and just about anything gave me yellow or red. My first easy 3 hour unstructured outdoor ride gave me a red day when it didn’t feel warranted. After taking that day off and doing an Achievable sweet spot workout that I marked Moderate I got another red day.
I assume all of that was because it was taking my recent two weeks of no activity into account. Now after nearly 4 weeks on the bike, I get yellows from harder prescribed workouts rather than red. I, for one, appreciate the new feature and think it will help me as long as I follow the suggestions.
One thing I noticed yesterday, I had a stretch VO2 max ride on Saturday so my Sunday ride became yellow. I understand you don’t want to get burned out, but this week turns out to be a recovery week. I didn’t realize that, but my suggestion would be if I’m going to have an easy week anyway, I’d have rather pushed through a longer endurance ride (went from 2 hours to 45 min).
TR may want to take recovery weeks into consideration.
Anyone else notice the new feature to release with RLGL today, “Training Approach?” A five point scale from Conservative to Aggressive that seems to affect how quickly TR will assign yellow or red days. Strange it wasn’t brought up in the announcement video.
RLGL seems to be working for me. I’ve been going through some health issues and I initially lost 70 points on my FTP, but after a month, have regained 10. Still a long ways to go, but it seems to be doing it’s job.
One thing I wish that it did though was also account for other activities. I play some tennis and some days I feel that the TR workout would’ve have changed somewhat if it knew that I played tennis the night before. Maybe they can add that in?
Whether you have a recovery week or not, the day is still yellow. It’s still up to you ultimately if you push it or not with the recovery week coming up. RLGL is simply an alert, a warning. It doesn’t (nor should it) think for you.
This is my RLGL going in to a training camp off a vEverest. As you can see the majority of it was red, and rightly so… but I exclusively rode, ate and slept, and put easy spins in between any intensity or really big days. The fact I was able to do it doesn’t mean that RLGL was wrong, just that there was a clear warning that it was high risk and it had to be managed carefully.
That’s great if you have the experience and knowledge to do those things, although I’d argue that in your specific case RLGL didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. It’s not so great though if you’re new to training and signed up to get “the right workout every time”.
Just because you ‘can’ go deep on your last yellow day because you have a recovery week, doesn’t mean you should. TRs ‘right workout’ will be the best general suggestion based on the data they are able to crunch. You still have to use some common sense. RLGL guides that common sense, whether you are new or experienced.
Yeah, again, that’s great if you have the experience and knowledge to do those things. It’s not so great though if you’re new to training and expect TR to guide you.
I really don’t understand why so many people are overlooking that in the documentation, TR says “When a red day pops up on your Calendar we recommend taking the day off from all forms of training stress and focusing on recovery.” Do people really think new people read that as “or, you can just use ‘common sense’ and keep riding for several days and it will be fine. In fact, as seen in the example above, you can ignore it for 5 red days in a row and the next day will be yellow”.
Seems to be working pretty well for me at the moment. I am on a high volume plan with 3 high intensity workouts per week (VO2max, sweetspot and Threshold).
A yellow was triggered after a 2 hour 3.7 threshold workout on Saturday. I had intended to ride 3.5 hours endurance on Sunday but decided on 2.5 hour .50 IF ride instead.
I definitely want to do 100km rides as the summer approaches but I will need to make some adjustments. Cut back to a master high volume plan with 2 high intensity workouts or move back to mid volume.
As others have mentioned common sense is required and compromises required based upon your priorities.
If you’re new to training and expect TR to guide you, then you can. Simply follow TRs workouts. It’s adaptive training, it adapts and gives you a suitable workout.
There is nothing saying ‘hey, new guy - feel free to override the suggestion based on how you feel’. Experienced riders can can use that experience to make sensible override decisions, but there is nothing forcing new riders to do the same.
I think the majority of the questioners and naysayers are typically outside of the “average TR user”.
One of TRs straplines used to be “for the Time-crunched cyclist”. Most of you seem to think 10-20 hours a week is typical.
I think for the average user, 80% of the user base, averaging 2.5-3.5 W/kg, averaging around 3 hours a week on the trainer and maybe some outside riding for fun, that AIFTP, TrainNow, AT and RLGL are really, really useful.
Additionally, those that are a little disgruntled ate the most vocal and its a biased representation of a content userbase.
I do agree this is flawed. The week following all those red days you would expect consecutive yellow days or something to downgrade workouts.
I only intend to use it as a guide for a normal training week or week that involves a race or event. If I start seeing regular yellow or even a red is triggered then I need to make an adjustment somewhere.
is anyone running Fascat optimize & RLGL? Just curious if they align at all. I tried FC Optimize a year ago and found that it really didn’t align much with reality (like whoop readiness score) , I assume its better now, but not sure.
I understand that’s in the beta for RLGL v2.0 (alonmg with a reminder to wash those dishes in the sink. I’ve also seen on the forum that every single other app has had this for the past three versions, and at least one of them has an automatic ear washer you attach to your phone.
