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How does Garmin choose between indoor cycling and virtual cycling

RJK in Madison
8 months ago

I have activities that are both 'indoor cycling' and 'virtual cycling'  and I do not know the difference. Garmin seems to assign them at random, which makes it hard to see all trainer rides at once.

Background: I ride indoor for most of the winter on my regular road bike attached to a Saris H3. I virtually ride courses that I have loaded onto my Edge 830.

Any idea how it decides to call the activity indoor or virtual?

  • 0 8 months ago

    If you ride a course indoors it will be a virtual ride.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to e7andy

    I ride a course every time, yet some are listed as 'indoor' ride. The indoor ones even have the map of the ride.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to RJK in Madison

    If you ride a course it should be a virtual ride. I checked my rides and I see that one time my virtual ride was set to indoor cycling. What I did in that ride was that I started riding a course and then aborted the course after 20 minutes and continued to ride without a course for another 30 minutes.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to e7andy

    I appreciate your comments and experience. It is possible that the 'indoor' ones include non-course riding. But, the only non-course riding I sometimes do is a few minutes of cooldown after course is complete.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to RJK in Madison

    Do you stop the course or does it end by itself? If you stop it then it will likely be an indoor ride. 

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to e7andy

    I always let the course complete. 

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to RJK in Madison

    I have seen this a couple of times on my 830. I ride a complete course (saved from one of my real rides) indoors and I complete the course, but keep pedaling for a few minutes before I stop the activitiy on the 830 and the ride ends up as a Indoor ride. I really don't care, but it seems that the logic behind ending a course and not ending the activity soon enough is flawed.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to 4411990

    I do the same thing - ride a course saved from an outdoor ride and then a few more minutes to cool down. I don't really care either, other than when I try to look at a report of all the trainer riding I did for the year and I need to add two reports together manually.

    I have recently upgraded to an Edge 540 and the few rides I've done are all "Virtual Cycling".

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to RJK in Madison

    Forgot to say that in the case I was describing that the ridies end up as Indoor Cycling, so I just change it to Virtual Cycling. And it seems that in these cases I always beat the virtual partner. I don't think I've ever had to change one where the virtual partner wins... strange now that I think about it..

  • 0 6 months ago

    I was having the same question today, because I recorded two indoors activites with routes, one with my forerunner 255 and one with my edge 530

    And one was recorded as indoor (forerunner) and the other as virtual (edge), but both with maps on garmin connect

    No problem here because I can change to virtual on garmin connect (but not on strava, that's another issue, I can remove indoor to show the map but it's now a real ride..)

    Anyway, I just remember that I finished the route on the forerunner and kept pedaling to finish the workout (that left me on -5% slope and can't overide it) whereas I finished the workout before the route with the edge

    I didn't reproduce for now (because that was my 2 first indoor rides with routes) but I'll try multiple scenarios to see if it's because of the device or the route being finished or not