Strava export has jumpy pace data

Trying to investigate the fit files to see if this is a strava bug but my run data in intervals.icu has never looked quite right to me. specifically pace data bounces around a lot. at first I thought it was because the watch was moving but I was digging into the fit files from other apps on my phone and found that the data there was looking pretty smooth.
as an experiment I tried exporting from HealthKit → intervals.icu to compare and that made for quite a change in my data here.



There are some expected differences around auto pause being turned off but strava automatically removing stops at lights which is fine and I’m not really worried about. but what I’m confused by is the pace screen.
power and HR look pretty close but pace is all over the place on the strava export. on a different workout that I tested this on that was an internal session. the strava export seems to be missing multiple sections of pace data when the power data showed I was still moving.
I found this thread from 21

but when I pull the data field they recommend, it shows a velocity_smooth that is super jumpy. but when I export the .fit from strava, the enhanced speed column seems pretty flat to me.
am I missing something about how this data flow works?

is this a known limitation of strava or is this something I should be changing settings to avoid.
playing around with different data workflows but right now these are recorded on an Apple Watch with workout-outdoors, pushed to strava (looks fine there) and then imported to intervals.icu

I don’t know why the Strava data is looking bad. Intervals.icu uses the velocity_smooth trace from Strava as is.

Jaggy Pace data is often caused by the GAP calculation with mediocre altitude data.

is there a way I can get the export from strava that has the velocity_smooth included? when I dump the original activity from strava it only has the enhanced speed column.

but good information. let me see if I can checkout the altitude data. this was a semi flat course with only ± 30 ft but maybe its not super granular as a result

I think you would need to use the Strava API for that.