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Why elevation is incorrect on Garmin connect when creating a course?

Hi!

I've noticed this earlier here in Finland but now it's a bit annoying. I'm participating a local trail run with some elevation and I made a course using a better website. When I uploaded the course to Connect, it shows 492ft (158m) but when I uploaded the same course to Strava, it shows about 1000ft (305m). The real elevation is 335m according to the trail run's website so Srava is a lot closer and given that I made the course, it's close enough. I can't use for example PacePro because Garmin Connect shows wrong elevation.

Why is this?

0 trux over 2 years ago

Are you speaking really about the elevation (absolute elevation of the peak point, for example?), or about the Total Ascent? The total ascent depends very much on the resolution or on the filters used for the calculation. The finer calculation, the bigger total ascent. It is a well known effect known from the cartography under the name Coastline paradox - Wikipedia. So my guess is that each of the sites is using their own method for filtering the source data. Unfortunately there is no commonly accepted standard, as far as I know, prescribing the threshold for ignoring small elevation changes.

However, I cannot exclude that there is a true problem, caused by bad source data, or indeed a bug in the course calculation. In the past I already saw some complaints from other users here on the forum. If you can reproduce similar problems also for other locations, I recommend contacting the Support, sending them the evidence, and having them investigate the issue.

0 7955775 over 2 years ago in reply to trux

Hey, I'm talking about total ascent. I'm going to contact support. Thanks for your response!