Two runners with the same result - different on strava. How?

[Bliss]

Hi, this has happened again and I am getting annoyed by whatever Strava is doing with my team runs uploaded from garmin. Picture this:

runner A (garmin) and runner B (polar) run the same trail, have the same pace, same pauses, everything is basically the same. Stats in both garmin and polar app are nearly identical - obviously, we ran together. Yet on strava, my (garmin) activity is 52 MINUTES longer than my friends. Like how the **bleep** is that possible if we ran arm by arm? His average moving pace in Strava reflects exactly what his polar app says, in my case, according to strava - I am 30% slower than him. Where is the logic in this?

Garmin: https://strava.app.link/vjoeZ2WQIMb

Polar: https://strava.app.link/xWOk5LZQIMb

[Jane · Accepted solution]

Hello @Bliss 

Thanks for posting about this and apologies for any confusion. Looking at those two activities, I can see that the elapsed time is nearly identical - 2:33:14 versus 2:33:15. The difference is in the moving time calculation and your average pace is calculated using moving time, not elapsed time. 

 We calculate your moving time based on your activity's GPS locations, distance, and speed. A very inaccurate moving time is often the result of erroneous GPS data, or a GPS recording where there are big gaps between the recorded GPS points.  I recommend checking your Garmin GPS device to see if there's an option to increase the sampling rate of your GPS.  That may help for future recordings.  

Full details on how we calculate moving time 

For this activity, you could try swapping the distance stream to see if that helps give more accurate details. 

Changing the distance stream may also update the pace or duration of an activity. If your device created a distance stream using sensors such as a speed sensor, pedometer, or accelerometer, you can switch your distance on Strava to use GPS data rather than the generated distance stream.

To swap your distance stream:

• Go to your activity page on the website (this feature is currently not accessible in our mobile apps)
• From the activity page click on (◦◦◦) the more options menu > Correct Distance.
• From the pop-up, click "Correct Distance".
• When the status changes from "Calculating" to "Updated," refresh the page.

If you would like to revert the change, you can click the same link and click "Revert Distance".

For more information, see our article on How distance is calculated for your activity.