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Garmin and Strava

N3river
28 days ago

Garmin and Strava showing large discrepancy on avg speed. I’ve used garmin and strava for years and never had this issue before. Strava shows avg speed of 16.4 and Garmin shows 19 avg speed and 19.2 avg moving speed so not sure where the 16.4 is coming from. 

  • 0 28 days ago

    Looks like a problem at Strava. At the distance 29.14 miles and time 1:31:52, the speed 19.0 mph as shown in GC, is correct.

    29.14 mi / 1:31:52 = 29.14 mi / ((91*60+52 s) / 3600s) h = 29.14 mi / 1.53 h = 19.045751634 ~= 19.0 mph

    Apparently they started to use the Elapsed Time, instead of the Total Time (like Garmin does), or the Moving Time (like Strava did previously). When you calculate the speed with the elapsed time, it gives indeed the speed they show:

    29.14 mi / 1:46:47 = 29.14 mi / ((106*60+47 s) / 3600 s) h = 16.3733416576 ~= 16.4 mph

  • 0 19 days ago

    Yeah, as trux said, looks they're using elapsed time to calculate speed in this case.

    Someone complained about this on the strava support site 2 years ago and it turns out this is a problem for indoor cycling activities:

    https://communityhub.strava.com/strava-features-chat-5/moving-time-vs-elapsed-time-in-indoor-cyxling-462 

    Here's the related community idea which can be discussed and voted on:

    (login required)

    https://communityhub.strava.com/ideas/show-activity-metrics-based-on-moving-time-on-indoor-workouts-instead-of-elapsed-time-6748 

    Strava's official explanation is that they require GPS data to accurately determine moving time. Ofc this doesn't explain why they don't use "total time" / "timer time" instead of elapsed time. In other words, if they won't take moving time into account, they could at least take activity pauses into account. That way they would at least be using the 1:31:52 total time recorded by your Garmin, instead of the 1:46:47/48 elapsed time.

    Also, I noticed your strava screenshot literally says "Moving Time" (1:46:48) which would be an additional bug if in fact that's truly elapsed time. Usually Strava will not say "moving time" unless they mean moving time. For example, if you tag your run as a race, then Strava will purposely use elapsed time - which makes sense for races - but then the activity summary will no longer show moving time, but it will show elapsed time with the correct label of "Elapsed Time". Strava is pretty transparent in that case.

    It might be worth reporting a bug about the moving time label.

    Anyway, despite the fact that Strava support implied this is a problem for all indoor activities, I will say that I've synced treadmill runs to Strava, and they used moving time for pace, as expected. (I'm not a cyclist, so I haven't seen your problem, but I do use Strava regularly for runs, which are mostly outdoors.)

    However, others claim this problem also affects other indoor sports like running and swimming, so maybe I'm missing something.