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Open-water swim distance differs from the track recorded? (Todays swimrun 352m vs. approx 750m, unacceptable)

Hi,

Did my first open-water swim today with 955. Track looks nice and smooth, but the distance is something that makes me think.

Garmin Connect reports 3810m: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/9055012148 

Opened the GPX in GPXSee as wanted to have a little bit closed look and it looked like it's 4k. Umm. Upload GPX to some online tool:


What are others seeing as open-water swim distance? Does it differ from the GPX track? 

Does anyone have any ideas/explanations to give?

Here is the exported GPX if someone wants to analyze it.
activity_9055012148.zip

EDIT: Apparently this was just a mild issue compared to todays one. Link to it: https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-955-series/298162/open-water-swim-distance-differs-from-the-track-recorded/1443414#1443414 

  • I can agree. 

    Okay I did my first open water swim today with my new Forerunner 955 Solar. And I must say when I checked the map everything looks very promosing. Until I checked the distance Face palm tone1 my Forerunner with new and so good gps only had 3843m of swimming. While my 2 year old Polar Grit X had 4420m. So I checkt the distance of the Strava segment we have in our swim spot. And this says 430m but it isn't s closed loop so let's say 440m when it's closed. I did 10 loops today. So normaly 4400m exact what my Polar says.

    So why is the oh so good Garmin multiband + all systems over rated gps 600m off? Can someone maybe explain why this can be and if this can be solved? Because a 650euro 2022 watch can't do what my 2020 399euro watch does Ok hand tone1Joy

    I also checked the distance with Google maps just to check.

    Can't post pictures here :(

  • Any chance of you posting a link to your Garmin Connect activity?

  • Imagine who has spent 1000€ for Fenix 7X SS! Same thing! Only Garmin could solve it, but clearly they have no interest in solving this bug that is present since years! My advice is continue to use your Grit X (i use Suunto 9), or ony other brand for open water swim. You could also upvote here : Open water swim activity under report distance - Public Beta 9.xx - Fenix 7 Family - Public Beta Reports - Garmin Forums , but i don't think they will solve it in near future, since as i said, i'm reporting it since Fenix 6/Forerunner 945 time.

  • I just downloaden the gpx from my Garmin Connect swim of today. And upload it again, then is says I did 4.35km with the same file Joy Garmin please check this there is clearly a big problem there!! 

  • Good thing i don't swim, this would annoy the hell out of me!

  • Although my swim distances seem pretty good, I thought I'd try this too. GPX increases the distance a small bit, but for the TCX it's the same distance as the original.

  • Yeah.. It's annoying and would be nice to get some comment from Garmin that wtf, what are they doing and why. As the GPS tracks looks to have more correct distances. Maybe they are trying to do some filtering for GPS spikes and with the accuracy 955's new MediaTek (=Airoha) is so good that the algorithm goes more bonkers and filters too much. At least haven't come up with better explanation. Can't believe Garmin to be so stupid to trying to estimate distance from swim strokes.

    In Strava one can fix the distance with "Correct the distance". That's pretty nice. (OTH, Strava and multisport, FFS. Maybe 2060 we can expect support for multisport in Strava.)

    And it wasn't so bad at least for me in 945, but with 955 it's pretty horrible with swimruns using hand paddles and normal swims more ok, but still leaves wanting some more distance.

  • You can change the distance also in Garmin Connect. So that's what I'm doing next time. Check the gpx file for the correct distance, then change the swim distance in Garmin Connect and then upload it to Strava. Hope this will work. I can test it next week normaly Ok hand tone1

  • Manual work, to load the GPX, check the distance, edit the activity. Not really a workaround that I see myself doing. Versus just in Strava couple of clicks. Ok, one could just do the clicks in Strava, look the distance there, but then again manual edit for stuff that Garmin should fix and get correctly already in the first place.