average moving pace

I have the same question. Totally buzzed, too.

It is related to the difference between "time" and "moving time".

See these time definitions copy/pasted from Garmin Connect help FAQ's

Garmin Connect provides three Time measurements on the Details page:

Time

Time is the recording time reported by the device. For Fitness devices, this should equal the Time value reported on the device. For other devices, this should equal the amount of time elapsed from the actual Start and Finish time of an activity.

Avg Speed/Pace is based off the Time value.

Moving Time

Garmin Connect calculates Moving Time by removing the amount of time when the user is stopped. This is helpful for customers who upload activities with a Garmin device that either don't have AutoPause or have AutoPause turned off. For those who have AutoPause turned on or hit the Stop and Start button in the middle of an activity, the Moving Time should be very close or equal to Time.

Avg Moving Speed/Pace is based off the Moving Time value.

Elapsed Time

Garmin Connect calculates the Elapsed Time by the amount of time elapsed from the actual Start and Finish time of an activity. This is helpful for customers with a Garmin device that have AutoPause turned on or hit the Stop and Start button in the middle of an activity. For those who don't have AutoPause or have that feature turned off on their device, Elapsed time should be very close or equal to Time.

Thanks, Gerry.

I'm afraid that Garmin really needs to hire some people that are good at documentation. That text is not very clear at all.

Take a look at this sentence:

"Time is the recording time reported by the device. For Fitness devices, this should equal the Time value reported on the device. "

Could this sentence be any less meaningful? This is what it says:

"The time is the time. For fitness devices, it should be equal to the time."

It's too bad they have such great devices with documentation written by idiots.

Thanks Gerry! I too was wondering what the difference was :)

The definitions of time, elapsed time and moving time all make sense, but what I want to know (and the question that was asked by the OP) is why is moving time less than elapsed time on an activity where you had no stops, pauses and were moving the entire time?

4 years late but first time seeing the thread.

My best guess for there being a difference in time and moving time would be right angled turns. I have auto lap turned on for every mile and when looking at the individual laps I noticed that there is a correlation between sharp turns and moving times being lower than time.

So now for difference in pace and moving pace. Say you run 1 mile in 8 minutes with out stopping your watch but had to stop to wait for a car before crossing and you had to wait 10 seconds. You pace would be 8:00 while your average moving pace would be 7:50.

Hope this gets to you if you haven't found an answer else where.

Also, could Ave Pace be influenced by out 'n' back intervals? Meaning, device falsely senses a stop when turning around.

I think you're right that Out and Back would probably cause it to happen as well.

I've seen this and I think the source comes down to a question: How does the device know when you are stopped?

This is not as simple as you might think. GPS readings always have a certain amount of random jitter. If the device interpreted "stop" as consecutive readings at the same location, then there would never be a stop.

What it actually does is treat velocity below a certain threshold as stopped. The auto-stop feature on my 310xt even lets you set that threshold. Thus, even if you never actually actually came to a stop, if your speed ever drops below the threshold your track will report a stop. You may not even have to reach the threshold of the GPS errors conspire to cancel out your movement.

Turns can also increase the likelihood of a erroneous stop since they decrease the distance traveled between samples. The most extreme is a u-turn. If a sample is taken before the u-turn and the next is after the u-turn, the two samples may show the same location, or at least close enough to be considered the same when errors are accounted for.

So, at the end of the day, which is more accurate: average pace or average moving pace?