Understand your training
Power Stress Balance explained
Your balance puts recent running effort in the context of your longer training history. A negative number means recent stress is higher than your longer-term baseline. A positive number means it is lower. Neither is automatically good or bad.
Find it under Power-based training on your dashboard. Use the trend alongside your session goals, recovery and how you feel, rather than trying to achieve a particular score every day.
Your per-run Power Stress score
Open a run to see Estimated Power Stress and the Critical Power used to calculate it. The score combines how long you ran with how much power you produced relative to that CP. It is a load estimate, not a rating of how well you executed the workout.
30 minutes at 80% CP
32 points
60 minutes at 80% CP
64 points
60 minutes at 100% CP
100 points
These are steady-power examples, not workout recommendations. For a recorded run, each available sample contributes separately, so hard repetitions and easy recoveries both count. A long easy run and a shorter hard run can accumulate similar points while serving different training purposes.
Use the score to understand a session's contribution to your training week. An easy day's lower score may be exactly what the plan intended. There are no per-run Productive or Performance bands: those labels apply to the rolling balance, not to an individual score.
A higher applicable CP produces fewer points for the same recorded power and duration. The run page shows the CP used, which may differ from today's dashboard CP. Avoid comparing scores without considering CP, recording coverage and the session's purpose.
Stryd's RSS explanation describes a per-second power-to-CP formula with two constants, but does not supply their values. Our estimate uses an explicit squared intensity calculation instead. It cannot reproduce or replace an official Stryd RSS value.
What are the three numbers?
- 7-day stress · fatigue
- The faster-moving average. It responds quickly to a hard session, a busy week or a few lighter days. “Fatigue” is a training-load estimate, not a measurement of how tired you feel.
- 42-day stress · fitness
- The slower-moving baseline. It reflects sustained running stress. “Fitness” here describes accumulated load, not your speed, race potential or a fitness test result.
- Today's balance
- 42-day stress minus 7-day stress. Both averages give more weight to recent days; they are not weekly totals or simple averages of only those days.
Example: 40 − 55 = −15
If your longer-term stress is 40 and recent stress is 55, your balance is −15, in our Productive range. That describes a recent increase in load; it does not prove that you have recovered or that another hard run is appropriate.
On the chart, the bars show each day's estimated Power Stress. The line shows the rolling balance. A hard day usually pulls the balance down; lighter days allow the short-term average to fall faster than the long-term one.
What does my range mean?
These are the ranges used by GoAnd.Run. They are descriptive guides, not individual limits or guaranteed outcomes. The status uses the balance to one decimal place; the large dashboard number is rounded to a whole number.
| Balance | Status | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Below −40 | Overreaching | A large recent load relative to your baseline. Review the recent increase and prioritise recovery over adding more stress. |
| −40 to below −25 | Cautionary | A heavy recent block. Check that easier days are actually easier before increasing volume or intensity. |
| −25 to below −10 | Productive | Recent load exceeds your baseline. This can fit a building week with recovery built in; the label is not a reason to add an extra session. |
| −10 to +5 inclusive | Maintenance | Recent and longer-term load are relatively close. Follow the purpose of your current training phase. |
| Above +5 to +25 | Performance | Recent load has eased relative to the baseline, as it may during a taper. This does not establish race readiness on its own. |
| Above +25 | Low stress | Much less recent recorded stress. Check for planned rest or missing imports before interpreting it as reduced training. |
How should it affect my training?
During a building week: a falling balance can reflect the work you planned. Check it against the size of the recent increase and your ability to complete sessions as intended. Keep the planned recovery instead of chasing a more negative number.
During recovery: let easier days do their job. A rising balance is an expected consequence of less recent stress, not an instruction to replace the rest with intervals.
Before a race: use the trend to understand the reduction in load during your taper. Follow your taper plan rather than extending rest or adding work just to reach the Performance band.
When the number and your experience disagree: consider your sleep, soreness, illness, heat and non-running activity. This running-power calculation does not measure those. A favourable score does not override feeling unwell or unusually fatigued.
The dashboard balance does not directly trigger plan changes. Coaching can use individual runs' power stress and wider training context, but crossing a band does not automatically rewrite your next workout.
Where the estimate comes from
GoAnd.Run estimates Power Stress from duration and power relative to the Critical Power applicable to the run. One hour at CP equals 100 points; one hour at a steady 80% of CP equals 64 points. With recorded samples, each segment contributes according to its duration and squared relative power. Where samples are unavailable, normalised power and moving time can provide a summary estimate.
Each day's run scores are added together. Every day, the 7-day average moves one seventh of the way towards that day's score, and the 42-day average moves one forty-second of the way. The dashboard calculates the series from stored activity scores when you open it, including today's processed runs. Newly imported or reprocessed data can change the chart.
New or incomplete history
Allow roughly six weeks of consistent recorded training before placing much weight on the longer-term baseline. The calculation starts from zero, so a short import history can make ordinary training look like a sudden build.
A day with no recorded Power Stress contributes zero, whether you rested or ran without usable power data. Missing runs, partial sensor coverage or missing historical CP can understate your load. Check your imports and CP before changing training in response to an unexpected score. Cross-training does not contribute to this running balance.
How this relates to Stryd RSB
Stryd calls its metric Running Stress Balance (RSB). Our dashboard uses the same broad comparison of recent and longer-term load, but starts from GoAnd.Run's own estimated Power Stress, not Stryd's proprietary Running Stress Score (RSS). Expect the values to differ; do not treat the two scores as interchangeable.
For Stryd's own metric, see Stryd's Running Stress Balance explanation. The ranges and calculation described above document GoAnd.Run's implementation.