Ride with friends, train alone
Not necessarily the best place for this, but RLGL info from today’s cast:
For the TR team - if I understood your comment correctly, you’re talking about introducing Peloton style Leaderboard ranking within workouts. If it’s anything like on Peloton, this leads to a lot of negative behavior. People will intentionally skew power output (digital doping) to move up the leaderboard, push intervals into the next zone or sprint at the end to increase output, etc. You may also see lots of negative accusations amongst users. If I misunderstood the comment, I’d gladly be corrected.
The key part regarding WLV2 starts a bit after 38 minutes in. He talks about how RLGL runs on WLV2 and that for even people that train outside all season, not even using TR outside workouts, not even structured, that [Z] will work for them. By [Z] I’m not sure if @Nate_Pearson meant RLGL, WLV2 or both. It sounds like he meant RLGL but I’m still not sure after re-listening.
This is on my hard efforts playlist. Seems appropriate
It looked like an avalanche of new things. I’m unsure if they are all the same and connected to each other.
- RLGL: this is natural. You don’t need an app to tell you that you smashed a group ride yesterday and should take it easy today.
- "Fatigue Monitor?!: That looks very promising, very, very interesting. Wait and see.
I agree with you that it might not be interesting.
I’m bothered I didn’t make that association since I really like that movie.
Despite the repeat evidence of people apparently ignoring their own signals and overreaching in small and big ways? I see less of the “I’m burned out…” and such these days (perhaps in part via change in TR’s own service), but to think that we always see, interpret AND correctly act on those signals is a stretch for me.
Desire to skip taking an off day is a thread as of this week which points to what we often see is that people want to plow on with their plan, even at the expense of their fitness direction once they pop. Endless “I’m sick… can I get back on the bike anyway?” and similar threads where people aim to push thru clear signs they need to alter direction are inevitable each year as well. We also have plenty of people who rely on stuff like HRV and other metrics as supplements to their own feelings.
All that to say that I doubt the idea of trusting your body and following that is going to work for some (many?) around here. Having a supplemental indicator seems like a fine option for me. Those that are comfortable on their own are free to ignore it.
I aim to review the history as a start, and see how it aligns with my own experience since I have detailed notes in workouts and on the calendar dating back 3+ years. If it looks like it can identify issues I had before I noticed them myself, then there is potential value in the feature. If it gives non-sense results, I will ignore it but I won’t choose to ditch it without at least a bit of a look to start.
I’m not saying is useless, but I think of this in another approach. It’d be a nice addition as user input, not a TR offer. For instance, following the podcast, I didn’t sleep well last night, and I’m completely tired today. TR has scheduled a 90m RPE7 for me. Ok, that’s not gonna happen. I could then indicate to the system that I’m not doing ok for this. Great!
But, read the topic, if TR was able to read your hard group ride yesterday, it should adapt for today giving you a day off or an easy recovery ride. That is a real green light/red light under the hood.
I, personally, don’t see a place for a light feature indicating where I am at my fatigue if, BIG IF, TR was able to read all my efforts. That’s the point.
But that is exactly what RLGL is doing per Nate. It is using WLV2 behind the scenes to consider the status given. Meaning it IS looking at ALL the imported cycling activities in your TR calendar. We don’t know yet if it will just give us this signal or if it will also offer adaptations. It may well do that and if so, seems to address your concern.
But at this time, it seems we don’t know all it will/won’t do since we don’t have it and have just gotten various hints. Time will tell and I hope we get it sooner rather than later so we can stop speculating and actually see it in action.
And that was exactly my post,
It looked like an avalanche of new things. I’m unsure if they are all the same and connected to each other.
It has lots of features connected to WL2 that will adapt your plan based on unstructured rides, plus RLGL. Will RLGL be a signal from TR saying, ok, we detect lots of things here, take it easy champ, but no adapting on your plan. Is fatigue control part of it? How so?
See, Nate looks passionate about this, which is very nice, and apparently, he wants to deliver those news quickly, and at the same time he realizes he shouldn’t do those “promises” on a podcast, and it all seems a bit confusing.
Does anyone know if rlgl only works for cycling or takes at least running also into the algorithm?
I do both cycling and running and if running is ignored it’s more or less useless for anyone doing multiple sports.
It’s all a bit of a Catch-22 unfortunately. Nate is still rolling with the “We want to hear about upcoming features.” result in the poll he ran long ago. As such, he is openly sharing these pending features and even loose ideas at times. That follows the poll and was great by me to a point.
The catch comes in the “When will we get it?” side of things. Inevitable for people to ask this as soon as we hear about something interesting or useful, but the nature of this all means timelines are a guess at best from what I have seen over the years. I’m OK with that but what bothers me is when they state something with an apparent level of certainty and the date slips once, then again… Just happened 4 weeks ago with Nate reading & reporting that he would likely add RLGL Early Access for some users in a day or whatever. Here we are a month later with another mention “It’s coming…”.
Maybe parallel to that frustration is that I dislike the repeated “This is soooo kewl… I learned so much from this…” comments by the hosts over the years. I get that they are excited and see value there that they want to share with us. But this is a different kettle of fish for me as it is well beyond a “tease” at this point. It’s almost salt in the wound to a degree from the length of time we’ve been told it’s nearly here only to have it ignored and then eventually explained for delays.
We will likely hit the 3rd Anniversary of the AT release (Feb 25, 2021) which was also the first mention of WLV2 in essence for analyzing non-TR stuff. I will consider the group lucky if we even get RLGL by that day given the track record. And who knows if we will actually have WLV2 before then next “outdoor” season for the N. Hemi?
I’ve bit my tongue a long time on these issues but it has hit a new level of frustration with how this has all gone down and continues to play out. Regardless of the fact that I voted for info via that poll, I’d rather not hear about any more until we can touch these tools.
They have never mentioned anything other than cycling from what I’ve caught. Considering the issues around this, I would be surprised if it does anything else in the mix to start at least.
100%. I’ve been with TR a long time and know that “soon” means “not soon at all”, but at this point it’s just annoying to hear about any new features that aren’t currently available. I think @Nate_Pearson needs to rethink this strategy. I can’t imagine how annoyed a new user must feel constantly waiting for a feature and must almost feel like it’s a bait and switch. Unless it’s being released to Beta, just keep any and all talk off the forum and podcast.
Yeah, I have to say I kept my sub last year because WLV2/RLGL was right around the corner. That was almost a year ago.
Doesn’t Garmin already do this with the “Body Battery”?
On another note…
I am curious if this will be individualized or a blanket response for all users? We all have different “red lines” with training intensity and volume we can tolerate. A collegiate or pro cyclist is going to be different than most. If I try to crush monster volume and intensity I probably deserve a red light… but to pro it is normal. Do we both get flagged? How is that differentiated?
I’m reading today’s posts about WLV2 and RL/GL and the comments reflect my perspective. For TR these comments (from seemingly logical and supportive people who are TR users and advocates) should be a large flashing yellow light (to keep the analogy going). TR has gotten itself into a position by overpromising and under-delivering on these tools for three years now as @mcneese.chad points out. And then we keep hearing how stuff not available to us is so wonderful from those in the circle who are using it – but it’s coming soon.
Frankly, @Nate_Pearson, until TR is ready to make good on it’s commitments/promises to deliver, I think they are better telling us they will be going silent until it’s ready for release, and then doing that. Don’t pour salt in the road rash of crashed expectations. There’s already been damage done to paying customers who have kept subscriptions on the promise of things to come. I don’t quite know how they can recover from that other than to make good on what they’ve teased/baited/promised for way too long.