Related
Options

Course ETE / ETA - what's it based on?

SpikySimonW
over 4 years ago
  • Progress within that specific activity so far, either overall average speed or recent average speed?
  • Average speed of the last recorded x hours worth of that activity type? (fyi. Strava uses this logic for its planned route time estimates, from memory it's based on your past 8 hours of recorded activity)
  • Any pacing partner -like info that might be embedded into the course itself (not something I've really played around with)?
  • How much if at all is elevation factored in?

More out of curiosity than anything else - obviously there are so many factors it will never be more than an educated guess. FWIW my experience to date, mostly on long trail runs and hikes (5+ hours) has been fairly accurate, that said I see it more of a countdown feature vs. an absolute. A good example would be a route I know starts off hard with lots of elevation and then with an easier end - if at around half way it shows an ETA of 4:00pm then I am reasonably confident I'll arrive sometime earlier than 4:00pm.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    From my experience it is not based on historic average, not based on current ride average and not paced on time set to pace partner. Why...? (1) Because my average is really consistent throughout all my rides. To be honest, my real average is probably faster then when I use navigation (on the road bike), because I also ride my TT. Maybe, because I also use it on the Tacx it is a bit lower, because I don't look at speed then but only power (depends on the gear you ride during the workout) (2) At the start of a 100km training the ETA is off by about 1,5hour... With only 10km to go the ETA can still be off for about 30m (so you might argue that it is dynamic...) (3) Because if you set a pace partner you can ride in front of your pace partner but still have a suggested ETA that is slower than you will achieve (with out doubt). So I am still really curious how Garmin calculates this...

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 2574094

    I'd prefer ETE to be based on the average pace/speed for last 30 minutes or so. Here is the reason.

    1) More often than not the speed isn't consistent. It may be dropping towards the end. The terrain isn't consistent either. Very often the first half of an activity may be an uphill and the second one - downhill. Seeing the time based on the recent speed is more realistic.

    2) I'd argue that ETE is only helpful when the goal destination (end of course, course point, or waypoint) is relatively close. Basically it doesn't matter what my speed was long before or could theoretically be. What matters is how long would it take me based on how fast I am moving now. What Garmin currently has doesn't answer that question. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to silentvoyager

    Totally agree. My usual MTB tours are flat at first, so I am going around 30 km/h. This makes the ETA (destination is the peak) completely wrong as I am of course much slower on the climbing part.

    Has anybody found a workaround to reset the ETA calculation? I was thinking of restarting the course when I reach the climb, but that would require me to stop, which I don't really want. Or create a multisport activity and switching to MTB on the climb. But for both ideas I don't really know if it will reset the ETA. Anybody has experience with that?

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to #Matthias#

    In for instance plotaroute.com, I can configure how the gps points in course file are time stamped based on up/downhill. You can try it.

    In GC I think you can put in avg speed and I think that is used to put time stamps on the gps points and that the deviceis intended to read that.

    I think that in the passed that garmin devices calculated ete/eta from the time stamps. I'm not sure anymore. Maybe also weight in current avg speed. I've been saving screenshots from my watch a lot of times during the years to try to dig into it, but never actually done it.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to phoglund_

    Do you know if it's possible to create a gpx file (or different type of file)  without any timings at all? I find it really distracting to have the watch constantly telling me a 5hr hike will be over and done in 3:45