Strava Elevation Gain Way Off

Yes, I have the same problem. Did you have any luck resolving it?

Is that with every second or smart recording?


Nobody ever seems to state what exactly they mean by elevation gain. So say at 0 secs I am at 100 metres, 1 sec 101 metres, 2 secs back to 100 metres. That might be an elevation gain of 1m and a loss of 1m. However if you omit the "middle" point - either due to smart recording or a coarser elevation model you are on the flat...

Strava and Garmin both nominally do the same thing for elevation gain with activities that have no altimeter data in that they infer elevation from putting the route over GIS topo data. The difference is Strava then runs it through an algorithm that determines whether or not an incline meets their definition of a hill, and if it doesn't you don't get "credit" for that incline. (my interpretation of something I read on their site a while ago, I'll see if I can find it again and post a link)

On my standard 5 mile recovery run route with all of my non-altimeter watches Connect would give me around 125ft elevation gain but Strava gives me 0 for that route. The last month or so I've been using a Fenix 3 and get 145ft. This route doesn't have any major hills but does have several spots of 2%-3% incline for at least 150-200 yards which doesn't seem to meet Strava's criteria.

Edit: Here is the description I was talking about

How do you calculate elevation gain?

Elevation data on Strava is smoothed to take out noise— we have a 'threshold' where climbing needs to occur consistently for more than 10 meters before it is added to the total elevation gain. If we did not have this threshold, the elevation numbers would be inflated for longer activities. This gain threshold applies for both rides and runs.

However there is now also this bit here. https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000024864-Announcing-Strava-s-Elevation-Basemap
That post is dated 28 December 2016 and I haven't used a non-altimeter watch on any of my routes since then so maybe having baro based elevation from my Fenix added to their database will improve elevation data on my 235. Something to test in the near future I reckon.