Hi all, a question on how GAP is calculated and why it appears to be different than Strava GAP (even though it should be the same model). To illustrate this I’ve picked two recent races:
Run 1: 9/7/26
Intervals: Pace 6:16/mi; GAP 6:18/mi; climbing 95 ft
Strava: Pave 6:17/mi; GAP 6:13/mi; climbing 102 ft
Run 2: 7/11/26
Intervals: 6:52/mi; 6:50/mi; climbing 297 ft
Strava: 6:52/mi; 6:46/mi; climbing 266
The climbing for both runs seems very similar, though in Run 2, Strava has 30 less feet climbed (but a faster GAP).
What is the reason for the discrepancy? And can it be normalized to be the same as Strava? Thanks!
No because there’s no industry standard for elevation gain and moving time. May sound strange but just picture this example:
You go over a small bump ~0.5m. Do you add that to the elevation and then also to the descent , or do you ignore it?
What if you have 20 of those small bumps after each other?
Each manufacturer has it’s own algorithm for elevation and it is strongly adapted to the sensitivity of the integrated baro-sensor. Have you ever seen a group of athletes where all devices come back with the same elevation gain?
Same goes for moving time. What’s the threshold to define moving or not? Even if all devices used the same threshold, there will still be differences caused by GPS accuracy.