I, like some of you I imagine, tried the Breakaway app for a free trial didn’t continue with a paid subscription since it could only sync rides from certain platforms (Zwift being one of them).
Just got an email from them today announcing Strava integration:
Anyone have a paid Breakaway subscription? Worth it?
Before I get into how I am using it, some preamble to begin (apologies). I would call myself an enthusiast dedicating around 45-60 mins 2x mid week for structured indoor training and then completing an 70-100km/800-1000m of climbing outdoor unstructured ride on the weekend with my club or with friends. Last year I did a full year of TrainerRoad on a low volume plan substituting any structure ride on the weekend with my normal unstructured social outdoor ride (this is why I cycle, to have some hard efforts up climbs and talk crap over coffee during or after the ride, and I like tracking metrics).
I left TrainerRoad not because it was not working for me but it became too expensive, especially once I added in the occasional Zwift Month when I was bored of TrainerRoad UI or it was a wet weekend and my club had a group indoor ride hosted on Zwift.
So now to BreakAway, I am currently running Breakaway App and Join App together to see how they work. I have been using both for about 3 months. And at this point I would love a blend of the two but I will focus in on the Breakaway to answer your question.
Strengths:
Tracking performance to power: it is similar to TrainingPeaks (paid subscription only much cheaper) in that it is good at motivating you when you make progress agains power zones on rides and tracking work load for the week against the improvement rates you are after
It tracks this well over last 8 weeks vs previous 8 weeks vs overall Personal records, it also maps this to other athletes to know how you compare.
You also tell it how many active days you have and it will motivate you towards completing these to hit your weekly training load. It recommends training workouts to help get there across Recovery, Endurance and Intensity which changes based on your recent workload.
Weakness
The recommendations are workouts that currently exist in Zwift, previous rides or defined simple workout designed to listen to within the app that talk you through what zones to hit (no trainer control or head unit integration).
This is where I use JOIN App as it is great at recommending workouts for the time I have available targeting the focus area I want to develop. You can run them in JOIN workout Player or sync them to Zwift via free TrainingPeaks account which works well.
The app also has a teams section where you can include friends or others to compare your performance and motivate each other, however I am yet to use this.
UI is generally good and they are updating regularly.
Overall I like it, but mainly for a training peaks metrics substitute and motivation towards hitting weekly training load and getting power zone achievements (but not using their training recommendations, using JOIN for that). Both these apps are evolving quickly and provide something simpler to TrainerRoad that works for someone like me where to be honest just increasing riding time is just as beneficial as over focussing on training workout specifics to get an increase in FTP. Both have eFTP, Breakaway is still a work in progress but JOIN is pretty accurate in my experience.
