Fenix 3 HR + Garmin Connect: Step Distance includes distance from ALL Activities?

The issue that https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?349793-Garmin-Connect-Daily-Distance deals with is a little different: it is about the problem that Garmin Connect adds distance to your "Daily steps" activity, apparently from other sources, which leads to bogus active calories and crazy average stride length. That activity is really only for tracking your distance/calories from steps only. You can see that "Daily Steps" activity alongside your other logged activities on the Garmin Connect website when you open your daily overview and look into the activities tab (e.g. via "Hamburger" menu top left => Steps => Activities tab). I don't think it can be seen on the watch itself and I haven't even found it in the mobile app.

The widget on the watch itself always lists the total covered distance, steps and other activities combined.

The issue that https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?349793-Garmin-Connect-Daily-Distance deals with is a little different: it is about the problem that Garmin Connect adds distance to your "Daily steps" activity, apparently from other sources, which leads to bogus active calories and crazy average stride length. That activity is really only for tracking your distance/calories from steps only. You can see that "Daily Steps" activity alongside your other logged activities on the Garmin Connect website when you open your daily overview and look into the activities tab (e.g. via "Hamburger" menu top left => Steps => Activities tab). I don't think it can be seen on the watch itself and I haven't even found it in the mobile app.

The widget on the watch itself always lists the total covered distance, steps and other activities combined.

Thanks for replying. Yes, I realise that your issue is slightly different, hence I did not want to confuse everyone by adding on to your thread.

Your case: In GC - your steps have some additional distance added to it by an unknown source.

My case: In GC, my steps have the distance of my Driving activity (I created a new activity/app from the "Other" template and named it "Driving", and tracked a 12km drive) included in it. And the increased steps distance have remained even though I have deleted the aforesaid Driving activity.

I cannot seem to attach a screen shot (maybe because I am a day old on this forum?) but under the tab "DAILY SUMMARY" tab, I have the following:

[FONT=Courier New]Time of Day Active Calories Duration Distance Activity Type Activity Name
19:14 367 39:46 3.40 km Running Running
Daily Steps 190 -- 13.87 km -- --
Totals 557 39:46 17.27 km -- --
[/FONT]

As you can see, my jog was 3.4 km. My daily steps was 13.87 km for 190 active calories (It was about only 1700 steps I think). This is not possible. It has combined my step data with my driving data, an activity I previously deleted and does not show up now.

Does anyone else have this issue?

Hi all,

Okay, after some experimentation, I think I have found the GC bug.

I walked around and clocked 2.84km and 168 Active Calories under "Steps".

Then I drove for 4 km under a timed Activity called "Other". I assume the 41 calories there are from my BMR since there was no exertion whatsoever. You can see this reflected in this screenshot:



Then I went in to GC and deleted the driving activity (Johor Bahru Other). Immediately, the 4km assigned to the driving activity went into my steps activity. Also, the active calories from the driving activity got combined with the active calories from the Steps. I don't believe this is correct, since I assume the 41 active calories are from my BMR, not from driving!

You can see this in this screenshot:



There is something very wrong with GC in how it calculates this! This is obviously a bug. Is no one else having this issue, or have people just not noticed?

TiredTexel - I'm not sure if this is linked to the issue you faced.

Would welcome any thoughts back from everyone.

A few thoughts:

Have you tried turning off activity tracking while doing a timed activity? That might give you the result you are looking for.
However, as far as the distance and calories goes I believe this is a normal behavior when activity tracking is on. All day activity tracking includes all distance the Fenix 3 records throughout the day, so if you do an activity with GPS on it's going to include that distance. The same applies when cycling. The distance in the activity tracking is not purely a step distance, it is a separate metric from steps. The 41 calories would be any calories above BMR, which since almost everyone burns more than BMR in a day there should be something in active calories, especially since Garmin recently switched to using straight BRM for rest calories and not including the typical multiplier to approximate TDEE. Since you have all day heart rate monitoring, my guess is those calories from driving would have been there regardless of if you recorded an activity or not and once you deleted the activity those calories and the distance had to go somewhere so they were put into the Daily Steps, which is kind of a catch all for anything not part of a recorded activity. Keep in mind this is just my understanding of how this works based on my experience with the Fenix 3, so I could be wrong.

Hi PMPAULDN81,

Many thanks for your thoughts back. That could be the case. I will try turning off activity tracking and see what happens / experiment.

I wish Garmin would be more transparent about how all of this is calculated. It is almost like we are trying to reverse engineer the process. I have also logged a two cases with Garmin related to this, but it has been 2 days and I haven't heard back yet.