Differences in moving time

Bug Reports
1

I found an interesting effect: For a long ride with a number of short breaks (autopause on) I find the following values of moving time:
Intervalls.icu: 10:50:15
Strava: 11:22:24
Garmin Connect: 10:44:20
Elapsed time is in all three equal: 12:06:10
I can send the .fit File to David.

2

Wow thats a massive ride! For moving time for the whole activity Intervals.icu uses the speed if available with anything >= 0.05 m/s (0.18 km/h) considered moving. I don’t know how Strava and GC do it.

3

It all boils down to how you define elapsed, moving, total time… And Garmin, Strava, Intervals, etc all do it in another way.
One thing is clear: auto-pause on your device causes more problems then it does good. It used to work more or less acceptable when most people used speed sensors on the bike (magnet on the wheel). With GPS derived speed (and running always uses GPS), it goes nuts when in difficult GPS areas. And where do you stop for food/drink replenishment? Tight corners, switchbacks and the like all influence the algorithm that is used to define moving/not moving. Multiple Garmin devices also have a setting to define what should be considered the threshold between moving or not.
My advice is to disable Auto-Pause and let the analysis software decide what is or is not moving time. If your device auto-pauses, nothing is recorded and the analysis software has less data to make out if you’re moving or not. Only pause manually when you are having a longer stop.

Here’s some info on what Strava does:

Garmin devices also truncate seconds when auto-pausing iso of rounding. Another source of small errors that can pile-up on long rides/runs.

If I remember correctly, Garmin has:

  • Elapsed Time as the difference between the two points in time where you started and stopped the activity
  • Total Time or Time as the above time minus the pauses
  • Moving time on your device depending on the setting you have for the threshold
  • Moving Time on Garmin Connect as calculated by the algorithm they use.

In the end, we have plenty of different times to choose from… Can it be any more confusing?

3 Likes
4

Thanks for your excellent explanation. I will disable Auto-Pause.
What could be also a reason of the differences are the frequent tunnels on the route. There GPS signals have been lost, which could lead to wrong or zero speed. I will try to analyze this in detail.