Validity of leaderboard segments

Its nothing to do with getting in the hall of fame or posting the best time, its to do with the fact that when the segment pops up when I enter it & it brings up the virtual competitor page I cannot compete with it, I am always a long way/time behind, so I cannot use that to pace myself against a realistic fast time, it makes pacing on the segment useless. Yes most of the time I am just out to beat my own times, so in many ways its better to set them as courses, but it is fun to use segments as well, but pointless if the top time is unattainable from a pacing point of view whilst on the bike

Two weeks later, she was on the tandem with her husband. I told him to "GO!" when they got there. I couldn't hold their wheel. The husband ended up third on the segment. The wife's Garmin lagged his by several seconds and a mile per hour, even though it was mounted on her bars, not even three feet away from his.

So, not only is the segment stuff just for fun, it is subject to the vagaries of the technology.

I had this problem a few weeks ago where I was riding segments with other people and then slowing down after the end of the segments for others to catch up. Often they got better times than me!
Solved problem by changing system parameter - recording interval - from Smart to 1 sec

Hope this helps

Richard

Agreed, its very annoying that some people seem intent on sabotaging segments. I have a favourite segment, and each time I enter it my garmin tells me & off it goes, my best time is 22 mins so far, problem is the fastest time has been logged as 8 mins, which works out at 38 mph, impossible as there are a few hills in it. So all the time I am racing against a ghost time that is impossible to get near, very frustrating, and clearly the leading time is bogus

I use Benjamin's excellent tool to select a Strava Segment and then select what target to download to the 1000 to compete against. You can select your best time, the time of a friend, the time of the person who is say 10th, a member of your cycling club or the KOM, always lets YOU set a realistic target. I started using the Garmin segments but in my locality there are very few and after I started to replicate Strava segments Benjamin's tool came along which saves loads of time and unlike Garmin the Strava leaderboards update immediately.
See thread How to get Strava - segments on your Edge 1000

The segments concept is new to me, I like it.
Let them cheat if that is what is taking place, however these are not money winning, prize or trophy garnering activities.

When I read the post about someone driving their car on the segment I laughed, not at the poster, but at the funny image of someone driving slowly as if they are sneaking through and hiding the GPS from view. Where as an onlooker would not even know what was going on.
The segment competition is cool and something to strive for, however this is something we do freely and there is no judge or official presiding.
Simply: if someone tops your time, they are either faster or they cheated.
You know how much effort you put forth, be proud of that.

I just race against my PR. There's no way I can personally compete against the top leaders in my town. Well, not yet. ;)

+1 for flagging wrong segment leaders. i have browsed through the forums and there is a bunch of similar threads:

https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?165748-Cycling-activity-on-Running-segment
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?85021-Ability-to-FLAG-a-segment-if-someone-has-driven-it-in-their-car-in-Garmin-connect
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?113935-Reporting-a-segment-cheater
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?96206-Flag-a-ride-or-activity
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?102125-Flagging-Segments
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?85673-Bogus-segment-times
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?228262-How-can-we-remove-people-who-obviously-biked-run-segments

could not this have been fixed in garmin since 2014?
i am switching fully to strava segments. pitty.

Segments are still useless

Could not this have been fixed in garmin since 2014?
i am switching fully to strava segments. pitty.

Still not fixed. The segment feature on Garmin Connect is useless. Unfortunately there are several GC users in my area that don't know how to categorize their activities as "cycling" rather than "running." Either that or there is a new breed of super-human old men that found out how to run a sub 4 minute mile on a 20-mile course.

Twice I've submitted support request to Garmin about this. No response. :(

Twice I've submitted support request to Garmin about this. No response. :(

Finally, I got a response. However, it's proved to be more frustrating than it's worth. In spite of my very detailed explaination of the issue, we went back and forth with several emails before they "sort of" got it. Though I'm still not sure. On top of that, there is really no conversation. I send the email and it takes 5 to 7 days to get a response, I imediately reply, then wait another 5 to 7 days. So an issue that would take 10 minutes to explain is taking 3 weeks. And we're not done yet. Guess I need to pick up the phone and call?


Support's initial response #1:

Sorry to hear that the activities from the other users have incorrectly uploaded with the wrong sport profile. Please follow the steps below in order to change the sport from running to cycling on the Forerunner 910XT:

Press and hold the Mode button
Select "Bike"
The Forerunner 910XT will now be in Bike mode.
Please let us know if you have any other questions or need any further assistance.

My response:

Thanks for the response. However, I don't think you understand. I am a runner, so I'm not going to be changing my activity to cylcing. I'm doing it correctly. The other users are the ones with the activities that are being categorized incorrectly, which is causing incorrect ratings in the segments. Please read my description below, as I believe it is very thorough, including links to the activities in question.

Support's Response #2:

I would be happy to help you. Sorry about the confusion here. If other users are getting there data uploaded incorrectly then we would need to talk to that customer. This is because we need to trouble shoot the issue individually as this is not a known issue with a quick fix. You might also try to the support center as this has a lot of great information on our products and issue that come up.

I'm confident this should lead to the resolution of your concerns and in the future feel free to visit our Support Center for self-help tools to aid resolving your future inquiries. Thanks for being a Garmin customer.

My response #2:

This is not an issue I can fix. This is an issue with the other customers not knowing (or caring) how they classify their activity. This is also sometimes on issue with Strava.com. However, with Strava, when users notice that another user's activity is miss-classified, it is possible to flag it so it immediately is removed from segment rankings. I have already thoroughly scanned the support center for the answer, as well as the Garmin forums. There is nothing in there about me adjusting another user's activity. Please point me to the correct location in the support center so that I can fix this on my own, if possible.

In the end, if this is not possible, perhaps there is a way for me to request the "flagging of activities" feature to be implemented in future Garmin Connect updates.

Thanks again for your assistance

I think at this time I'll just give up. Using Strava from now on.

Here we are a year later and still no way to flag an activity as wrong activity type and popular segments are all led by cyclist "pretending to be" runners.