✓ Show Garmin calibrated treadmill distances on Strava activities

[DaftnDirect]

There is a problem with Garmin treadmill uploads to Strava whereby at the end of a run, you calibrate the distance based on the actual treadmill distance and the watch then uploads the recalibrated distance to Garmin Connect.

When synced with Strava however, Strava shows the uncalibrated distance, which can be a long way off. This seems to have been a problem for a long time, going by the age of the thread on the Garmin forum (5 years to be precise).

It would be great if the calibrated distances appeared on Strava.

[MattS_bsb]

I hadn't used a treadmill in years, so no telling when Garmin added the calibrate function.  They (Garmin Support) openly admit that their fitness tracking devices aren't as accurate at calculating distance without the aid of GPS.  To your first question though, on my lone treadmill activity in July of 2022, I did experience roughly .3 miles of distance disparity between Garmin and STRAVA, 7.57 miles to 7.26 respectively.  Duration of activity was spot on (1hr:00min:31secs), but because of the difference in distance, pace was about 20 seconds off (read: slower) per mile.  Sorry this isn't much of an answer, but perhaps it's the way the original .FIT file is parsed by STRAVA?  

[DaftnDirect]

I do about 50/50 road/treadamill and my first treadmill run with a Garmin 255 (with dynamics pod) was 2km out on a 10k run, so not good! Fine if you just use Garmin Connect to view your activities as that shows calibrated distance, something isn't quite right when Connect syncs with Strava and the uncalibrated value comes back.

It's an otherwise good watch but when I lose a feature that worked perfectly on my TomTom, it's a bit grating, particularly as these things aren't cheap.

We're trying to progress a fix with Garmin but if it's a 5 year old problem, I'm not holding my breath. If Strava devs read these threads perhaps they can confirm if they've heard about this issue or not and whether there's any helpful info I can pass back to Garmin to help things along, that would be good.

[greg]

Same issue here.  Garmin says the calibrated data is in the FIT file.  Strava – please use that value.

[Dave]

Agree, this would actually be a really good feature.
Many times I have had to delete the Strava treadmill entry that was imported from Garmin and add a manual activity to honestly reflect the treadmill distance I ran. This isn’t ideal as you lose the HR, cadence data etc. 

[lmontefi]

I have the same issue. I tried reuploading the .fit file but it was the same, pre-calibrated run.

[Dan_15]

Strava. PLEASE ADD THIS FEATURE! It should be relatively simple to either allow calibration of treadmill runs within the Strava app or to import calibrated data from Garmin. Most of us with access to a treadmill do not have access to an app-synched treadmill like peloton and want the most accurate workout data we can get with our existing equipment.

[DamienB]

Came here to say this. 
Please fix. It can’t be that hard. 
Training Peaks loads the calibrated distance so Strava should too!

Also- why not make it possible to add elevation gain to the treadmill activity. That would be even better. 

[MandarinMiata]

Really simple fix with the data mapping, The api just needs to request the calibrated distance column from Garmins DB and if the value differs from calculated distance then use that.

[jschlotzhauer]

I've definitely experienced a drift in calibrated data between Garmin and Strava. In my opinion the whole point of calibration is to maintain the integrity of the data. I did a 15K run a few weeks ago where my garmin device reported 11.14 miles and my treadmill reported 9.82. According to Garmin support, Strava does not support the edited portion of the .fit file which includes the calibrated data. I can't think of a use case beyond apathy towards the run data that would warrant not including the calibration. So frustrating.

[mrbuhia]

It's April 2023, Strava please fix! 🙂 

[Sam101]

I am a software engineer and was so annoyed by this that I built my own tool to do this more easily. Looking for bets testers if anyone would be interested! 

stravatreadmillfixer.com

[DaftnDirect]

I thanked you in the Garmin forum and I'll paste it here too! 🙂

Thanks for doing this, I'll give it a try. I've been doing manual edits/uploads up to now, all data is maintained but it takes maybe 10 minutes each time so anything that makes things easier is a win. 

It's just a shame that seemingly both Garmin and Strava see this as a problem for the other to fix (or at least the length of time it's taken to sort this out would suggest that to be the case).

The root cause being the watches don't carry out a recalibration of the raw data on-board prior to upload, they just add a single data entry which the Garmin site knows what to do with... whereas Strava doesn't manipulate any raw data. That's also why some makes of watches work fine, as they apply the recalibration and effectively learn from that calibration each time, and consecutively became more accurate. e.g. my old TomTom, uploading only after the calibration has taken place.

I guess Garmin aren't really motivated to have people use a competitor's website over their own. Strava on the other hand should have been more motivated. It will be a consideration though when choosing my next watch.

[DaftnDirect]

Perhaps a good idea would be to list watches that upload calibrated treadmill runs ok here.

I realise most people coming to this thread will probably be here because they have this issue... but on the off-chance that you have a watch that does this ok... could you please confirm your watch below???

I'll start with the (no longer sold) TomTom runner range. 

[boesharkey]

@Sam101 I tried out your Beta and it worked perfectly for me! A simple and elegant fix to a problem that has nagged me for years. Many thanks and well done!