I learned not to dwell on the details of the plan, and to just roll with it and trust things. It’s worked out.
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I tried loading different plans once, but the first week always came up the same. I later realised that maybe closing and opening the app might have done something, because I got a “plan updated” message. But it could also be that the first week, up to the FTP test, is always the same.
To be honest, the upcoming sessions change a lot in Join, so I’m not sure if the plan really matters.
You’ll also see that even when you add the 200km ride, the plan will change, but then it might change again when you actually upload the ride, because it does some sort of power analysis.
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What level are you guys at?. I don’t follow any plan, it has me at 35.
8.5 
The only way is up!
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Level is just some mix of FTP and CTL. Someone (Janhein?) did a nice reverse-engineered graph earlier in the thread, think its reply #30.
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Personally I treat level as a hand waving general value that doesn’t influence me too much. I more care about how I feel and what I’m capable of in practice, which so far has been a happy improvement for me. Hills that were problematic are fine now.
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I did indoor over the winter, haven’t changed yet though only a few days left. Undecided what plan I’ll do next, maybe just FTP or Stamina.
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On a day with a scheduled workout I push it to Training Peaks and execute the workout best I can using my Wahoo, after which I mark it against the workout, and that’s it.
If I’m really not feeling it I don’t mark it against the workout and say I did something else.
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16 - should be close to 17 soon but than I’ll be punished for taking a couple of a rest days in row.
The deduction for rest days is really annoying at times. It feels like a punishment.
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If you can, add it as a planned ride ahead of time. The plan will adapt. Then, after the ride, it will ask for feedback as normal and might adapt the plan again.
You cannot “plan” a ride on the same day. If I happen to do something that quite different from the suggested workout, I just upload that (and give feedback) and ‘skip’ the suggested workout (its an option under the workout). Join will moan “stick to the plan!”, but otherwise it seems ok, lol.
If the ride I did is somewhat close to the suggested workout, I just pretend it was the suggested workout.
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Timely thread resurgence as I was about to post. Level 35 here.
For outside rides if I’m planning to do my own thing I tend to change it to an easy endurance ride of about the right duration. If I don’t do that in advance I just import and rate my actual ride then click on the planned ride and say I did my own thing. Sometimes if I’m doing a ride with the same intent as the planned ride but split up slightly differently I’ll say I did it, it depends how close I get.
Why I was really heading back here though was I got my first real life feedback from my first TT of the season last night and early signs are that the training is doing what I want it to. I didn’t actually set my goal as TTs when I set it up (I set it as a long hilly sportive in July) but over the last few weeks my legs have started feeling good. I have an arm injury so rode my road bike last night and was only 30 seconds down on the time I did at the same time last year on the same course on a TT bike, when I was paying a proper coach. My power was actually higher last night although that could be due to the different position. So i’m pretty happy with how join is working for me at the moment, although there was a bit of a learning curve to making it work for me and realising that I need to add a bit more of my own input to adjust things depending on how I feel on the day of a session.
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No, I had a coach before. I joined the forum to try to decide whether to use TR but never actually did. My OH does though.
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They didn’t feel like… JOINing you? ba dum tss
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Thanks for your clever analysis!
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I’m at level 32 currently. As with TR’s progression levels, I find app/platform-specific levels less useful compared to tracking my progression in TrainingPeaks and WKO.
I like being able to adjust availability and export the updated workouts to TrainingPeaks, relatively easily.
(Currently Join will export any day’s workout to TrainingPeaks, but at the moment it will only export them to the ‘current’ day in TrainingPeaks. So I have to do a bit of a workaround by opening TrainingPeaks and redistributing the workouts to the correct/corresponding days in Join. Hopefully Join and TrainingPeaks will sort this out in the future.)
I was thinking about this last night as Strava popped up with a “compare your progress” thing from last month to this month.
It’s a wonder that more services aren’t using a “fitness” (CTL etc etc) times FTP metric to allow direct comparison year on year etc.
I have been really struggling to get going with training this season which has been frustrating. Looking back is tough
Really enjoying it. Love how it adjusts to what you do. This weekend I did a two day bikepacking trip, it automatically built in recovery days before giving me workouts for the next week. Also love the flexibility of being able to input and adjust the time available each day.
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That’s great to hear! It really feels like JOIN is a (somewhat) hidden gem for “regular people”.
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Sadly, just like TR, if you upload a ride that is not programmed or associated with a workout, the app doesn’t know how to read the data and adjust the program appropriately. Good thing I’m not paying for this.