Run distance off by over 1km between watch and strava...

Former Member over 8 years ago

Hello,

I've had my Fenix 5 for 3 weeks. Fw 2.72 (and now 2.9) seem to have fixed the freezing/losing satellites i've experienced early on (so i kept the watch past its return date).

However, i'm having the following issue now: I have several run activities where the total distance differs by 1k (on a 15k run) between the watch and strava or mygpsfiles.com...

Not sure which one is correct: i've taken my forerunner 225 along on some of the runs and it matches the fenix 5 (and there's virtually no difference between forerunner 225 and its strava activity)

It seems to only happen in the city, where around buildings, where the track is very 'wobbly' (as expected). On the trails, the fenix 5 seem to be happy (and matches strava distance)

My assumption at this stage is that the watch does something smart in calculating the distance, but using the 1s recording, it still records all the GPS 'errors' in the fit file, leading to strava getting 1km more on the total distance (screwing up all my paces, segments, ...)
On the forerunner 225, since the track is only recorded using 'smart' recording, it looks smoother, and distance is calculated pretty much the same as GC in strava.

If i export the fenix5 GPX (only GPS position info) in garmin connect, and re-import it, the total distance is the one reported in strava or mygpsfiles

ex:

Trail run 9.64 km in GC shows up as 9,6km in strava (great)

City run 15.36 km in GC shows up as 16,2km in strava

City run 14.77 km in GC shows up as 15.9km in strava

today with both watches:

Fenix 5: (fw 2.9, GPS+Glonass, 1s recording)
Garmin connect: 14.37 km
Strava: 15.2 km
Export/Import as GPX in connect: 15.22 km

Forerunner 225:
Garmin connect 13.95 km
Strava 14,1km
Export/Import as GPX in connect: 14.15 km
(i can live with 200m difference...)

My next step is to try again, with smart recording

Should i disable Glonass as well?

i've raised it with garmin support but havent heard back from them yet...

Thanks

0 RonM61 over 7 years ago

I am experiencing the same problem fenix 5 (5.4) garmin 7.0 km. Strava 7.55 km.

did you ever got an answer from support?

0 chunkywizard over 7 years ago

do either of you have a footpod?

0 Peppe over 7 years ago

I'm diving into this problem as well right now. I've had consistentiy 500-600m differences between my urban (small town) speedwalkings in the range 4.2-4.8km. The difference have been observed by the distances reported by my smartphone (Oneplus3) running simultaneously Sports Tracker and Samsung Health, and my Fenix 5 as shown in the Garmin Connect apps (both mobile and web).
Garmin says the distance is 4.2km, the phone says it's 4.8km.
Garmin GPX file imported into google shows a distance of 4.6km (as confirmed if I re-import the GPX file back into Garmin Connect, which is incidentally using Google Maps as well) and 4.47km on OpenStreetMap.
The smartphone's Sports Tracker GPX file confirms 4.8km if imported into Google Maps, as shown by Sports Tracker and Samsung Health.
Garmin GPX file is made of 2350 points, while the smartphone's only 500.
Simultaneously showning the two GPX files on the same map, both are imprecise, but the smartphone's seems to suffer much more important errors than the Fenix's.
Re-importing the Fenix's GPX file into Garmin Connect give the correct summary information but shows holes in some charts (e.g. Pace).

So, it seems to me that the Fenix is doing a pretty decent job in marking the points along the track, but then Garmin Connect doesn't seem to exploit that job at an equally decent level.

I wonder if there's a way to fix this.