Bike ride activity not tracking correct distance

Rutger T said:

Why is it so inaccurate? Or should it have something to do with my phone and gps/internet signal?

As long as the track on the map matches the reality, then there is no problem with GPS. Most likely you watch automatically paired with a speed sensor mounted either on your bike, or on a bike of somebody who was riding nearby. If you post the link to the activity, I could tell you for sure.

And No, I did not have the watch connected to a speed sensor

Rutger T said:

I already manually edited the activity and inserted 15km as total distance. Hope you can stil find something via the link.

Yes, I can see the problem - the 70km distance is in the activity file already in the very first second of the ride:

Unfortunately, I do not know what caused it. One possibility is that you started without waiting for the GPS lock on the phone, or that the connection to the phone malfunctioned, or that there is some general compatibility problem with the GPS of the phone. Another possibility is that the FIT file holding the activity data went corrupted for some reason.

Did the watch show the correct distance during the ride? And does it show the correct distance when you look at the details in the history on your Vivosmart? If so, then the subsequent file corruption during the sync is probably the reason. If it is wrong already on the watch, then a problem with the phone's GPS is more likely.

I recommend restarting both the phone, and the watch, and then trying another short ride. Make sure you do not start the activity before getting the GPS lock. Should it happen again, I recommend contacting the Product Support and having them investigating it.

Wrong distance is also shown on the watch and in the history of the Garmin Vivosmart connect app.

Just went for a short walk, waited for the GPS lock and right away the watch displayed that I had already walked 26 Km. Something is going wrong ik the first second of the activity. Wil restart my phone and watch and try again 

Restarting phone and watch solved the issue! Thanks for helping

Hi,

Seems it happened again. The ride was 36 km, yet according the tracked activity it was 90km. 

Check out my cycling activity on Garmin Connect. #beatyesterday
connect.garmin.com/.../15727090104

This time though, the extra distance was added at the end:

I recommend reaching out to the Product Support through their website at https://support.garmin.com. Use the Phone or Chat options. Email exchanges take a lot of time.

In the time being, use the Trim function in Garmin Connect and remove the first or the last few seconds of the activity in order to rectify the distance.

I reached out to them via chat and they told me to download the Garmin express tool. But this tool has to be run on a laptop or computer. As my laptop is owned by my employer I am not able to download this. 

But I also read that updates can be done via the garmin connect app. The why would I need to run Garmin Express?

Rutger T said:

The why would I need to run Garmin Express?

Because with GE you can check for updates, and perform them in a controllable way. With GC the update is slow, and may fail for diverse reasons, without giving you any direct feedback about the reasons.

Use a computer of a friend, or a public computer, where you can launch your private virtual session.