If I am organised I enter a planned ride on the day I am riding outside in advance. My weekend club rides are pretty predictable length and effort. This will then impact your training leading up to the planned ride
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I’ve used Join from January to June 2022 to prepare for a 250 km Gran Fondo event with ~3200m of elevation (a lot of short punchy hills in Limburg, NL). I used the plan where you input a distance and the meters of elevation. Here’s my intervals.icu fitness chart from that period.
The first 6 weeks of the plan were great, but then things derailed as I first went down with a serious flu and then got hit by COVID19 just 4 weeks later. That left me with only 4 weeks of proper training before my goal event, which I did finish and enjoy a lot! Goal accomplished, but I was hoping for better results in terms of general improvement so that’s when I ditched Join in favor of TR.
Looking back, it’s pretty obvious that my “lack of improvements” were due to getting seriously sick twice and expecting too much from such short time frames and low volume. In the first 6 weeks (which went by great) I only trained 3-5 hours per week (spread out over 3 rides) and my FTP went up 30W. Over the remaining 14 weeks (of which I missed 5) my FTP went up another 15W, despite the plan mostly focusing on general endurance.
I rode my goal event at an average of 190W over a little under 10 hours for an IF of 0.82 and 670 TSS.
Anyway, I’m currently reconsidering Join as I really enjoyed its flexibility. Am going to start using their “stamina builder” with a long term goal of riding La Marmotte in 2024.
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Sickness will hinder any training plan solution. >_>
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Oh absolutely! I was making the following mistakes at the time:
- Not appreciating a 45W gain in FTP (from 200 to 245W) despite focusing mostly on endurance, getting seriously ill twice (bed ridden for at least a week on both occasions) and doing very low volume.
- Comparing myself to a friend who is a genetic freak. Talking off the couch 3.5W / kg FTP then up to 4.2W / kg within weeks.
- Buying into TR’s marketing too much, thinking TR would be the magic bullet to give me waaaaay more improved performance vs. just upping my volume input and being more consistent and patient.
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I feel as though there’s certain lessons we all have to learn and then accept, that being one of them.
This is a 22.5% increase in FTP despite all the challenges you highlighted! Good work! It’s always important to contextualize your gains.
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There’s a finishing gif in my plan for today too 
but I’ve come down with a slight cold, and haven’t actually done any proper workouts for a few days.
Join is again predicting an FTP increase that seems too high to me. I’d do another test, but there is no point as I’m not feeling 100%.
I’m quite happy with my progress though. This is still base training for me (I’m building for autumn), and my general fitness and long-duration power seems quite good compared to the last years. There’s a notable lack of 1 to 5 minute efforts in my power curve though, so I think it’s time for some more vo2max work. I did do the odd one during my last plan, but often skipped it because I did a weekly crit and crit-like group race, which I felt was enough intensity for the time of the year (for me).
Next up, I want to do a plan with more vo2max work. Anyone know which one would be good for that? I’m thinking “short hills” maybe? It feels a bit early to be starting the cx plan.
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I haven’t reached to the point where JOIN predicting anything. Does it do it when there’s a test planned?
It’s a little hidden, but if you click your profile photo in the top-left corner on the first screen then you should see some training stats like current Join level, expected FTP and some metrics over the last 7 days, month and year.
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I wish they’d include a graph of the FTP and level development. Comparing to 7 or 28 days ago doesn’t work that well for me, because the development is a bit jumpy.
I’ve got a 4km commute from my home to work (8km) per day. It’s got a massive hill and the intensity factor of the ride is usually pretty high.
I’ve noticed that when I add this commute to my training plan and rate it, it can remove a future workout. Sometimes a pretty significant workout, at least more significant than my commute. Should I just be leaving these commute rides out and ignore them?
I would first try to get the IF for those rides down by going up that hill as easy as mechanically possible.
If that doesn’t work then yeah, I’d leave them out. Still take it very easy on those commutes though, leave the hard stuff for hard workout days!
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I think it depends on how long you have been doing these commutes. If you have been doing these for a while it should be considered in to your training load as not to stressing anymore. However, JOIN will always try to include one or two recovery days, so this commute will always take away another ride if you commute everyday.
If that is the case I would not include them, or do your planned ride on the commute.
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For what its worth I’d leave them in. Join is obviously taking them into account so shouldn’t you? You don’t know but subsequent workouts farther out from the changed one might also be different. The commute gives you a training stress, and it all counts and mounts up. Just my 2p’s worth.
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One thing to check is what you’ve set your average weekly hours to. Its somewhere in settings. Make sure it includes your commute time. I found when I upped the hours I was doing, Join became less fussy about extra rides and dropped less future workouts.
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I do my workouts on my commute before work. I’ll just get up an hour earlier and turn my 10 minute 4km commute into an hour long commute.
I’m on a deadline to get to my kids school 15 minutes after I clock out, so no zone 2 chill ride. Even if I didn’t have that responsibility I’d probably still smash it a bit 
I’ve been doing this commute for years, even sold my car a while back cause I just enjoy riding to work.
Getting a bit trickier now my wife is back working full time and kids in school but I’ve persisted.
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Back on Join after splitting my training between TR, Xert and Join. Wasnt sure about Join before die to a few things but I’ve figured out how the app works more now. For example if i planned a race and put the instensity to 10 it would still schedule a Vo2 the next day. What ive found is that once the actual race gets uploaded it would then readjust and move that Vo2 further out.
So far its guiding me in the right direction and im feeling good off the bike.
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Just received an email:
Workout Score for iOS and Android is ready!
We hope this message finds you well and pedaling strong! We’re excited to announce a new feature: the Workout Score.
The Workout Score is an advanced tool designed to assess your workout execution. In just one number you’ll see how well you executed scheduled JOIN workouts.
This feature will be available for both iOS and Android devices. Just download the latest version of the app.
I wonder how well this works in relation to outdoor rides.
I just updated and checked the scores for my last few rides:
6.5, no idea why; probably variability? Duration and IF of each interval matches as I like to use NP during my workout.
8.6, great, but why did this one score so much higher than yesterday and tomorrow?
6.0,
7.2, could probably be higher if I didn’t need to reroute which added 30 mins to my 2h30 ride.
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Curious what others think. Partly because I train on flat terrain where it is easy to hit targets (or change/flex based on how I feel), I never felt like a workout score was needed. I can pull up and see compliance on TrainingPeaks (best for ranges) or Garmin Connect or Intervals.
The score on Garmin 840 is a little too simple, and I don’t see the point of obsessing over the score and gamifying it by trying to improve the Garmin time-in-zone score.
For example this one:
scored a 62 on Garmin. Should I care? NO.