Red/Yellow Days from following program as prescribed

TrainerRoad Software
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I am following the HV Sustained Power Build program more or less as prescribed, with no extra outdoor workouts or strength training.

After every single workout (VO2Max, Threshold or SS) it will put a Red or Yellow day following, in what would have been a Z2 Endurance ride. I did move the slider up between Balacned and Aggressive in the settings (2nd highest notch).

Intervals.icu still has me in the optimal training zone, and I never feel too fatigued to do an hour Endurance ride on a recovery day. Is RL/GL just too sensitive if the recommendation is not to follow the program as directed and replace recovery rides with Rest?

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When you say “more or less as prescribed” what does that mean? Have you missed any workouts? Or failed to complete any? Or marked any as very hard / maximum effort in the post workout survey? Have you taken all the rest days on the plan?

How long have you been following the plan for now?

I ask because if you started recently and the plan volume is higher than volume TR thinks you were used to before the plan, I can understand why it gives you yellow / red days.

On the other hand, if you are 11 weeks into a 12 week high volume plan that you have been executing as prescribed, I would be surprised if there were many yellow days and if there was a single red day.

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Hey @zachf,

First off, welcome to the forum! :partying_face:

I think that the reason Red Light Green Light has been a bit more cautious than you might have expected is likely because up until mid-February, you have pretty much no logged training history since the fall of 2022.

RLGL’s job is to prevent long-term fatigue from increasing training stress ramps too quickly. This means that if it thinks that the path you’re on isn’t going to work well for you long-term, it will try to slow things down to ensure that you’re on a sustainable path.

It’s adaptive, though, and is constantly recalculating your recent training to make good suggestions. This means that over time, it will adjust what it thinks you can handle and change your baseline based on the most recent data from your training history.

You have a few directions you could go here..

  1. You could follow RLGL’s advice and ramp up your volume more slowly to ensure that you don’t bury yourself in fatigue over the next few weeks.
  2. You could push your Training Approach slider all the way over to tell RLGL that you aren’t worried about overcooking yourself and want a more demanding training plan.

I, of course, am more inclined to recommend option #1. If you’re looking to train 9-10 hours a week, you’ll probably have more long-term success by ramping up your volume to that level more slowly over the span of a few weeks.

If, however, you’re set on taking on your current plan as is and are confident in your abilities to recover and adapt along the way, then, by all means, choose option #2.

Just know that we put these tools in place based on many, many athletes’ training data, and although it may seem excessive at times, we’re only recommending what we believe is the best approach for you based on what we’ve seen in the data from all of our other athletes.

Let me know if this helps and if you have any other questions or concerns along the way.

Best of luck! :handshake: