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Strava starred segments won't sync

Mintaka
over 4 years ago

I have 6 starred segments on my Strava account. 4 of them sync to my watch (Garmin Fenix 6X Pro Solar) and 2 of them don't. Note that *all six* of the segments do appear correctly when I log into connect.garmin.com and look at my Dashboard --> Segments. 

I have already done the following for troubleshooting:

- Turned my watch off and back on

- Unlinked my strava account from my garmin account and then re-linked them

- Un starred the segments in question and re-starred them. When I do this the segments disappear and then reappear from my connect.garmin.com dashboard as one would expect. But the 2 segments in question still do not sync onto the watch.

- I have tried syncing both through the Garmin Connect app on my phone and also through Garmin Express on my Windows computer. Interestingly, when I use Garmin Express, after I connect my watch to my computer via USB, if I have made changes to any Strava segments, it comes up with a pending sync. If I click on 'View Details' I can see the Strava segments in question about to be updated. But then once I complete the sync, they are still not on the watch. 

To answer some questions:

- Yes, the segments are public on Strava

- Yes, the segments are specifically for a 'Run' activity. I can see they have not been transferred to the watch because, on the watch, if I start a 'Run' activity and then select Options --> Training --> Strava Live Segments ... they are not in there. 

Any suggestions?? Thnx

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Change segments to Garmin segments. Then sync watch. Then change back to strava segments and sync again.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Deepflash

    Did that. Didn’t help I’m afraid. Attached is a photo of the Garmin connect dashboard showing 6 segments. And then a photo of the details of the pending sync in Garmin Express showing just 4 segments. The same 2 segments are missing. 

  • +1 over 4 years ago in reply to Mintaka

    I would guess that these two segments are “downhill segments”.  Strava doesn’t allow live tracking of downhill segments for safety reasons so they will not transfer to Garmin.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to ericgottlieb

    Thanks Eric. You are exactly right. I managed to figure this out yesterday as well by looking through some other threads. But here's the strange thing. The two segments that are 'downhill segments' are in fact exactly the same stretch of trail, but going in opposite directions (i.e. point A - B, and then point B - A.) And (in real life) the trail is almost completely flat. So Strava's 'determination' that both segments are downhill is obviously incorrect. 

    So my next question - where does Strava get it's elevation data from? Is it from it's DEM map? Or is it from the data that my watch recorded during the activity which I used to create the segment? If it's the latter, perhaps I just had some bad GPS data points that day which caused the erroneous elevation data? 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to ericgottlieb

    Incidentally - I have also figured out (for anyone else viewing) that a starrred segment on strava *does not* need to be public for it to sync. It will still sync even if it is a private segment (as long as it is not considered by strava to be > 0.25% downhill.) However - strangely enough - if it is a private segment it will *not* appear in your Segments widget on the connect.garmin.com dashboard. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Mintaka

    Strava determines whether a segment is downhill by looking at the net elevation change (i.e. the end elevation minus the start elevation) over the segment distance. If that net elevation grade is smaller than -0.25% Strava considers that being a downhill segment. 

    -0.25% is a very slight grade - just over 13 feet per mile or 2.5 meters per km. It is completely unreasonable to call that a real downhill, especially for sports other than cycling.

    What is worse, Strava completely ignores any elevation changes between segment start and end. So, for example, if you have a segment where you climb a steep mountain and go back to start, that is a flat 0% segment from Strava prospective. But dropping 13 feet per mile is a dangerous downhill.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to silentvoyager

    They should stop parenting people, simply display a warning when starring a downhill Segment if you are sure you wanna sync it and then allow you to still sync it.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Mintaka
    Mintaka said:
    So my next question - where does Strava get it's elevation data from? Is it from it's DEM map? Or is it from the data that my watch recorded during the activity which I used to create the segment?

    I think it is the latter. Whoever creates a segment determines its start and finish altitudes and its elevation profile. I've seen examples where segment elevation data was completely bogus. For example Strava would think segment was a steep climb while in reality it was completely flat.