This discussion has been locked.

You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Distance always wrong

Former Member over 5 years ago

I’ve had my garmin vivoactive 3 for a few months now and since running with other people I’ve noticed that the distance logged on the run is always shorter than everyone else - not by much, can be as little as 0.10 of mile or as much as 0.50 of a mile.

I wouldn’t mind but it makes the pace slower as well, which is frustrating when you are trying for PB’s.

Does anyone know how to fix it?

Just to add, I had lots of issues with the watch during the garmin outage. It wouldn’t save any runs & I had to do a full factory settings reset. I thought it was working but it is still cutting short on mileage.

I have turned off the auto-pause as I thought that might be the issue as it wasn’t always restarting when I started running, but that hasn’t resolved the issue fully.

Im running a half marathon in October and will be really annoyed if it doesn’t register the full distance!!

Thanks!

0 mtsarpilot over 5 years ago

Disabling Auto Pause was a good first step, that does fractionally reduce distance captured as it does not record the short distance you cover while it is paused until it starts again. The other feature I've found can take a fraction of distance out of a GPS recording is the Data Recording mode. If it is on "Smart", it is capturing a datapoint when it senses you have changed heading a little such as going around a corner. If you stay in a straight line, it may not record datapoints as frequently since it can aggregate many data points together once it sees a change in direction. This saves both a touch of battery power and memory. Changing it to "Every Second" ensure there is a data point recorded constantly no matter what your positional change is (as long as the GPS is not paused). You can find this setting by a long touch on the screen then: Settings -> System -> Data Recording

If your runs are long and straight I would guess this won't have much affect as Smart recording is not losing anything, if you are frequently making directional changes, potentially small ones like a slight curve in a road, or sharp turns, it could have a cumulative affect of a few hundredths of a mile over a long run.

One other thing to confirm, are you 100% everyone else's distance is right and yours is wrong? Could yours be right and their's wrong? It would be good to do a test run on an exactly known distance (an outdoor track for example) and see what the watch comes back with.

0 MB201 over 5 years ago

GPS is better for me since i switched the direction of the watch.

Wearing on left arm with Button pointing to the left. Guess its something with the postition of the GPS antenne inside the watch.