Reasons why my ride is uploading the full moving time the same as the elapsed time to Strava - auto pause enabled on Garmin

3 time metrics appear in the GC data for a ride, namely Time (T), Moving Time (MT) and Elapsed Time (ET).

As far as I can figure out:

ET is the difference between time stamps between pressing start and pressing stop to end the ride and isn’t used for average calculations.

T is the time that the timer is running.

If Auto Pause =Off, T=ET and MT is less depending on how many bakeries one visits.

If Auto Pause =On, T=MT apart from any lag in timer triggering.

Moving Average is based on MT and Average is based on T (not ET), so if Auto Pause =On, Average and Moving Average will essentially be the same. ET is purely used for overall time.

"ET is the difference between time stamps between pressing start and pressing stop to end the ride and isn’t used for average calculations."

Elapsed Time is used for average calculations. I use it all the time for my events with auto pause turned off to know what my average speed is overall. If I have auto pause turned on, my calculations are based on Riding time and my average speed will be recorded and higher than if I was just using Elapsed time.

If you look through the recent threads, there is a user who could not understand why their average speed was low and it was simply because it was based on elapsed time and not riding time.

When Auto Pause is Off, it’s also true that ET will give the overall average given that T and ET are equal because the timer runs continuously between start and stop triggers.

When Auto Pause is On, the timer stops and starts during the ride and average calculations shown in GC show that ET is not being used (rightly or wrongly) even though it’s available.

I leave Auto Pause Off for the same reasons you do.