Exclude activities from report totals

Hi - is there any trick to manually edit an activity to ensure it's excluded from all the activity reports? I can edit e.g. calories and distance to 0 so that doesn't add up, but the effort still shows up "doubling up" my numbers for activity reports that measures time spent in a week, overall training effort etc.

Background: I do virtual cycling using Rouvy on a Wahoo Kickr trainer and using Garmin Vector 3 pedals with data picked up by an Edge 530. Rouvy send the main data incl. the actual route (with GPS data on a map) that I ride, also with power (coming from either Kickr or Vector pedals), HR data, speed, cadence etc. That is all fine and that is my main file to track my cycling data. But I also want to pick up and look at some of the supplemental data that the Vector pedals and also the Edge 530 can gather, especially cycling dynamics but also e.g. breath data. This comes in as a second activity to Garmin Connect.

Ideally, I would merge the two activities into one, but other than being a major manual effort after each ride, the only program I've found that can do that is the "Fit File Repair Tool", and it throws too many scary security warnings from my anti-virus program, and also won't install on my main PC due to conflicts with my Office 365 package (FFRT uses a super outdated MS Access runtime).

So secondary and still acceptable solution is to have two activity files - one coming from Rouvy with main ride data, and one coming from Edge 530 with all the extra unique Garmin data. Except this doubles all my effort statistics in Garmin Connect. Therefore the ask of whether still get the data in for analysis, but any adjustment on it to not double up any major reporting data.

0 trux 4 months ago

Calories and other daily metrics are stored separately, so editing the values in the activity will not impact it. In your place, I would only use Edge for recording your rides. Connect the powermeter and all other Kickr sensors directly to Edge, and the activity will have all the data needed for calculating the metrics. The virtual GPS map is not needed for anything, and if you really want to check it, you can always do it in Wahoo's software.

0 allanhvass 4 months ago in reply to trux

Thanks Trux - that has indeed been considered, but as I collected and synced ALL my cycling activities across many different platforms over time (Tacx, Zwift, Rouvy, RGT) as well as outdoor MTB and road cycling and over many different devices (incl. both Tacx and Wahoo indoor trainers) over the last 22 years into Garmin Connect (actually, long time ago migrated first 10 years of data from SportTracks to Garmin), I'm very much not inclined to just stop collecting the GPS tracking data in a single place and create a split between multiple platforms, and with Garmin together with Strava being the most general ones and not easy to migrate all data out of again, that is where it needs to end up. I would imagine Garmin also wanting me to still commit to their platform being the main owner of all such data...

Interesting with the aspect of calories and daily metrics being stored separately - I do know that if I after import actually delete an activity again, it will be removed from all daily metrics I can determine, incl. work effort, calories, number of activities, etc. So I was hoping it would be possible to still achieve the same by tagging / zeroing some editable fields or categorizing activity in a specific way to not be included in totals. I just recently bought the Garmin Vector 3 pedals to do some more analysis of my pedal stroking, but it would not be super helpful if I just import for a short period after each ride and then delete it.

Even the ability to easily move the activity from one profile to another profile (yes, exporting and then importing could do it, but a good amount of manual work) could be a solution as well. Is there any way to do that easier?

0 trux 4 months ago in reply to allanhvass

allanhvass said:
I do know that if I after import actually delete an activity again, it will be removed from all daily metrics I can determine, incl. work effort, calories, number of activities, etc.

That's not what I can observe on my end, but to be sure I tested it right now again. See the screenshot below - there is the Calories data for the day of 12/30/2024, then the image of a short Walk from that date with 71 Calories, that I deleted, and then reloaded the Calories page, which continues showing the original values without deducing the Calories of the deleted activity.

There is some metrics that gets deleted together with the activity - for example Training Effect, but most of the metrics is kept separately from activities. That includes metrics like VO₂max, FTP, LTHR, etc. Not sure whether it differs at activities imported from 3rd parties (I do not use any so cannot test), but I would be surprised.

allanhvass said:
I'm very much not inclined to just stop collecting the GPS tracking data in a single place

I understand it at outdoors rides, but do not quite understand what it is good for at virtual activities. Unfortunately, I see no ideal solution for you, if you really need to keep the virtual tracks in GC.

0 allanhvass 4 months ago in reply to trux

Hmm, most of the metrics in reports I care about seems to be true sums of current activities within Garmin Connect, but yes I also see some metrics seeming to be based on even deleted activities. E.g. calories behaves odd.

But looks like most workable solution for me is a secondary profile to just collect those Garmin Vector 3 extra data sets by exporting from my primary profile, then import into secondary profile and then delete from primary profile. That's what I will do for now.

0 trux 4 months ago in reply to allanhvass

allanhvass said:
a secondary profile to just collect those Garmin Vector 3 extra data sets by exporting from my primary profile, then import into secondary profile and then delete from primary profile.

If you want to keep the power data from Vectors separately on a secondary account, wouldn't it be simpler to pair the Vector 3 pedals directly to a secondary phone (or a tablet) with Garmin Connect using the secondary account? That would save you all the exporting and importing. Or did I misunderstand something? Not sure the Vectors can store the data without a device standalone, but if not, you could use some cheap second hand device for that purpose - you won't need any modern beast, practically any old 2nd hand Garmin watch or Edge for a few bucks would do the trick.

0 allanhvass 4 months ago in reply to trux

Need to consider this. Would need to be a net new secondary device other than existing Edge 530 as well as my mobile phone, which both should be configured with my primary Garmin profile. Also needs to be a Garmin device supporting wifi sync, else this would just instead mean a manual cable based sync - swapping one manual effort with another. I think an Edge 520 would be the oldest model supporting this - a used one is about 70$ from a quick search, so not a totally free solution. For now, I will see if the approach works well with manually moving FIT files over.