I’ve used both TR and Join to train for the Marmotte.
TR got me in fantastic shape 2023 albeit I didn’t strictly follow the plans as I would substitute weekend intensity for long road spin. Hours were generally 8-10 hours.
I used Join for 2024 event and was pretty dissapointed.
I had the opposite experience to you following thd marmotte plan.
Pushed me to increase hours constantly, randomness of workouts became infuriating, no progression, no specifity and very little in the way of rest weeks or tapering.
In the final weeks I was doing 14-15 hours. The training was never really easy or hard.
Overall experience not enjoyable and I won’t be back. Still on an annual plan i think but wouldnt use it.
Back on TR now, finally doing some good efforts and feeling like I have my power back.
With Join’s 3 on, 1 off schedule, you effectively have 11 hours per week as Friday AND Tuesday will always be off. Even when I was doing high volume this summer, I would rarely get a workout longer than 4 hours and Join probably wants to ramp up the volume somewhat slowly, so volume would probably be closer to max of 10 hours (5 days x 2 hrs/day). You can look at the hours in the plan and see the hours forecasted. I would expect it to rise from 6 to 10-12 fairly quickly.
Yup, this is pretty much the program. There is an underlying TSS/Fitness progression. 3 days on, 1 day off… rest weeks rare (but also not needed, in my experience). I did get a taper in my plan.
I Think it tries to ramp slowly your longer day but if you simply do more it will adapt quickly, if it gives you 3h on your first saturday simply choose or do the same wo with 2h more of endurance.
Also you can always extend the Saturday wo with endurance it usually sticks to 4h wo but I read that extending in endurance won’t change much and it’s not a problem.
Another thing you can do is a 60m/90m easy ride on Tuesday (it will be an off day on your schedule) but don’t over do it or it will give you a rest day on wednesday
I started the endurance plan as the objective is probably too far in the future, it seems it fixed the issue with the hours
I’ll try it out until the end of the plan and I’ll see if I like it or not
I haven’t decided if I’m going to resubscribe or not. My Join sub is good until July. I took the month of October off from structure (we were in Boulder, so I just did a lot of riding and hiking). Since I got back, I’ve been doing a Fascat 16 weeks of SweetSpot plan that I bought a few years ago and enjoying the change of pace. I don’t own a build/specificity plan, but I feel like maybe I will do my own or pay for one. I also might do a month or two of exploring with the new and improved TR and see if I want to come back or see if CoachCat has improved and go that route. OTOH, I enjoy the variability of the LSRF plan, and a year of Join is super cheap…
I did JOIN’s stamina builder last summer after the marmotte but didn’t really gain from that (in fact I probably lost a little fitness) but perhaps that was necessary, an easier base period after the 5 month marmotte program. I’m on day 44 of LSRF now (where I occasionally swap threshold for initially rouvy and now Zwift climbs) and I feel like I am really improving again but I’ll see where my numbers end up in about 6 weeks.
Quick one for this group. Is anyone using JOIN workouts with HR only. I recently downsized and sold my smart trainer, so i am using a Dumb gym bike for my indoor rides training to HR zones on Apple Watch. I know i can get the workouts prescribed by JOIN onto my Apple Watch via training peaks. But i am interested if JOIN incorporates the completed workouts into its analysis. Which will come from my Finished workouts being sent to strava and picked up by JOIN from there. As these workouts will only contain time and HR (i.e no cadence/speed etc) my question is will these be assessed accordingly against the prescribed workout?
My Assioma went to crap and I’m using hr only for the last month, Join works in the exact same way as before, obviously the input from hr compared to power is probably less accurate, but it works.
Hi, quick question: does JOIN have a feature similiar to Trainerroads ‘PowerMatch’?
I find the reported watts on my Kickr Snap very inconsistent and have been using Assomias as the power source for a while.
I’m not sure but what I did (when my Assioma was working) was to link my Elite Tuo with my pedals which essentially makes the trainer use the pedal power as it’s own power.
I think Wahoo has the same feature for their trainers, check here:
The JOIN run portion is actually pretty cool sounding. I run 2-3 times a week in addition to my TR workouts. I’ve been managing my combined schedule in Intervals.icu.
