average stats in the simulator

I've never noticed this before, because I calculate my own internal Average Speed and Average Power for both Moving Time and Elapsed Time. Since Garmin doesn't provide both natively. It depends on your AutoPause Setting. I like to offer both, regardless of that setting. Elapsed Time stats are particularly helpful in a race where the clock never stops.
Meaning: if you fall below a threshold, like 1.5mph, your Moving Time stats retain your averages like it does when autopause is turned on. But your ELAPSED TIME stats drop. You might have a race goal distance in a timed event, so you know the avg speed you need to hit, including stop time.
Anyway, I recently used "Activity.getActivityInfo().averageSpeed" and "averagePower", and at least in the simulator, these values are retained when you Pause or Stop.
So it seems like the simulator assumes you've set AutoPause to ON? And there is no option to adjust this setting. Or I've missed where that is.
Just FYI in case you run into this.

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  • It depends on your AutoPause Setting

    What depends on your auto pause setting?

    I think you are trying to say that moving time is affected by auto pause (because you can't accumulate moving…

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  • It depends on your AutoPause Setting

    What depends on your auto pause setting?

    I think you are trying to say that moving time is affected by auto pause (because you can't accumulate moving time while the timer is paused), which means that your average speed (based on moving time) and average power (based on moving time) are also indirectly affected by auto pause, but as usual, it's not clear at all.

    Well, moving time is also affected when you manually stop the timer, too

    It's also affected by how much you move (or don't move).

    I don't really see how auto-pause is special here.

    Anyway, I recently used "Activity.getActivityInfo().averageSpeed" and "averagePower", and at least in the simulator, these values are retained when you Pause or Stop.
    So it seems like the simulator assumes you've set AutoPause to ON?

    This doesn't make any sense at all.

    First of all, ActivityInfo.averageSpeed, and ActivityInfo.averagePower are not based on moving time, they are based on activity time [*], just like almost every other stat in ActivityInfo (and almost every native data field), except elapsed time (obviously). Perhaps you don't see the difference because you never turn off auto pause, so your moving time is always the same as your activity time?

    [*] Activity time is simply the time is spent with the activity timer running (not paused or stopped). It's also the time that you see in Connect (i.e. "Total Time", not "Elapsed Time" or "Moving Time".)

    And even if they were based on moving time, what you're saying about auto pause still doesn't make any sense.

    Second of all, how would you expect the behaviour (in real life) to be different if auto pause was turned off? Yes, enabling auto pause could affect your activity time and/or moving time, assuming that you move slowly enough to trigger auto pause, but so what? Again, your activity time can also be affected by manually stopping/starting the timer. Your moving time can be affected by moving real slow, regardless of whether auto pause is turned on or off.

    What exactly do you mean by these averages values are "retained"? Why shouldn't they be retained? Are you implying that you would expect average speed or average power to be reset if auto pause was turned off and you stopped the timer? Because I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen (either for native data fields or for ActivityInfo). Have you ever used your Garmin without having auto pause turned on?

    EDIT: rereading your post, I see that you mean that the averages don't drop when you pause/stop the timer in the sim.

    But again, this is to be expected, since pausing/stopping the timer causes the total activity time to freeze, and stats averages are based on activity time.

    Why should auto pause change the way any stats are calculated? Auto pause pauses the timer for you. It shouldn't directly change how anything is calculated. The effect of auto pause should be no different than the effect of the user manually stopping the timer whenever they want to.

    Regardless of of how or why the activity timer is started, stopped, paused or unpaused, the calculation for average speed, average power, and all the other averages is still based on activity time. 

    So I'm really not sure what you're talking about. The simulator doesn't need to care whether auto pause is on or off for the purposes of calculating averages. Same with the watch. Just like the sim and watch don't need to know *why* you manually decided to stop/start the timer at any point, they just need to react properly to the button press by stopping/starting the timer.

    As usual you are making all kinds of weird assumptions that you haven't even made clear in your post.

    Just FYI in case you run into this.

    Nobody would "run into this" unless they had the same set of faulty assumptions.

    Elapsed Time stats are particularly helpful in a race where the clock never stops.

    The smart thing for the end user to do here would be to:

    - turn off auto pause for races

    - not manually stop the timer during races

    Then activity time would be the same as elapsed time, and all the averages and totals would line up with reality (except possibly for anything based on moving time, but the user could just ignore those).

    Tbh I can't imagine why *anyone* would use auto pause in a race, just so they'd be forced to use a 3rd-party app to see their *real* average speed (and other averages) during a race.

    If you don't want auto pause to mess up your stats, turn off auto pause.

  • The only relevance I can think of for auto-pause with your stats is that - as I said - auto pause being on means that your moving time should probably always be the same as activity time. (This is assuming that the auto-pause threshold on the watch is the same as the "moving" threshold in Connect, since Connect calculates moving time after the fact.)

    And if auto pause is off, then moving time may be shorter than activity time in some cases.

    I can almost see how you might think auto-pause being on has some direct effect on your (built-in) averages given that you seem think averages are based on moving time.

    But actually, (built-in) averages are based on activity time, so auto-pause is really not relevant here. It's just another way to pause/stop the timer.

    TL;DR the sim (and the watch/Edge) don't need to know whether auto-pause is turned on or off in order to calculate your stats. Auto-pause indirectly affects your stats, but so does manually stopping/starting the timer.

    As far as stats (averages and otherwise) are concerned, there's no difference between:

    - having the auto-pause feature stop the timer

    - stopping the timer yourself (whether or not auto pause is enabled)

    Simple example:

    1) I open the Run activity on my Garmin watch. Auto-pause is disabled.

    2) I start the the activity and run 5 km in 25 minutes (without manually stopping the timer)

    3) At exactly 5k / 25 minutes in, I manually pause the timer

    Now my average pace will be "retained" as 5:00/k (25 / 5) for as long as the timer is paused.

    Can you not see that at step 3), it doesn't matter (for the purposes of stats) whether I manually stopped the timer or whether auto-pause did it for me?

    Take the same example, except auto-pause is enabled. Now I run for 5k / 25 minutes, and at exactly 25 minutes in, I move slowly enough to trigger auto-pause. For as long as the timer is paused, my average pace will still be "retained" at 5:00/k.

    There's nothing special about auto-pause as far as your stats go. Auto-pause just pauses the timer for you, but it's the exact same effect as manually stopping the timer (whether or not auto pause is enabled).

    There is a difference wrt CIQ data field event handlers:

    - when the timer is paused due to auto-pause, the onTImerPause callback is invoked. When the activity is resumed via auto-pause, onTimerResume is invoked.

    - when the timer is stopped due to the user manually stopping the timer (by pressing START), the onTimerStop callback is invoked. When the user starts the timer again, the onTimerStart callback is invoked

    But there's no difference as far as stats go (either native data fields or CIQ ActivityInfo members, which typically reflect the corresponding native data fields anyway).