I have looked at a few older posts on the naming subject but can’t find the answer to my question.
I have both Garmin and Strava connected to Intervals.icu. Usually, activities imported from both sources keep the Garmin name, which is my preference. However, sometimes an activity is assigned the Strava name, even though it is imported from Garmin, too.
Why is that, and is there a way to always keep the Garmin name?
I will try to explain how the naming of an activity is working but there are a lot of if/then/else decisions in this process…
First thing to understand in the case of synching from both Garmin and Strava is that only the Garmin activity file will be kept. That’s because Strava isn’t forwarding the original activity file but a ‘Strava modified version’. That Strava version lacks some of the original info that is important for a lot of users. In cycling for example, Strava strips out the L/R power information. Intervals gives precedence to the more complete Garmin file.
Second thing to understand is that Garmin only forwards the original activity file (and only if it was recorded on a Garmin device!) and there is no way for Intervals to get access to things that you modify on Garmin Connect after saving the activity. If you rename on Garmin Connect or enter RPE there or any other change, these changes will not be captured by Intervals.
Then on the Garmin naming: There is no way to extract the Garmin name from the Fit file because it is hardcoded and encrypted in the file. If you get the Garmin name on an activity, it means that you started a structured workout and the name of the structured workout is what flows through. If you simply start a run/cycle activity from your Garmin, there is no name and Intervals gives it a name like Morning Run or similar. So in that case the name isn’t coming from Garmin. It might come from Strava, see below.
Now if you have both Garmin and Strava sync, Intervals will ‘call back’ to Strava with some webhooks to get the activity name you entered on Strava. If I remember correctly, this will only be the case for Intervals supporting users. Non supporting users will not get this functionality to save on Strava API calls.
So in your case, my guess is that the tuesday activity was a run you started without a workout plan and the others were executed from a planned workout file.
If anyone sees any errors in the above, please correct or add missing info.
I wanted to throw my hat at giving an explanation but after some thought, It might just be overly complicated to explain given there may be nuances that I cannot explain as I tried to do some naming of the FIT file which worked in Garmin but didn’t work when that activity was fwd to intervals.icu.
FWIW, if I import (manually upload) a fit file in to Garmin Connect, from my Zwift activity folder on my laptop, it pushes through to all my accounts, i.e. Strava, Intervals, TrainingPeaks, and all other apps linked to my Garmin Connect account. If it comes directly from Zwift, which I disabled, it doesn’t forward to any of them.
Thanks for the thorough explanation! I did have an understanding of some of that already but was missing a few crucial bits until now. That really helped me understand the whole Garmin/Strava dual sync much better.
The fact that Garmin hardcodes the names of activities which are not a structured workout will probably explain most of the cases where I found the name to match the Strava activity instead of the Garmin activity. And there is probably nothing I can to do about it.
It does not explain the one case in my example above though. This actually was a structured workout, and the name of the workout is included in the fit file which was sent to Intervals.icu (see screenshot from fitfileviewer above). Not sure if that is a singular case only - I will monitor if I see that more often…
On reviewing the screenshot about that workout, it seems to implie that the activiity file is a TCX and not a FIT? If so, that is likely the explanation. I don’t think TCX files are treated for the workout name.
i looked at the FIT file specs, supposedly that is how the naming is supposed to be. as in the “function call / function name”. I was also using that to craft my own FIT workout name…
but since I didn’t managed to get it done… perhaps I am also interpreting it wrongly.
It is actually a FIT file, not a TCX. Not sure why TCX is mentioned in the file, but this is the same in other FIT files where the name came across correctly.
