"Moving time" on indoor rides is way too short

[JimRiley]

When I ride my indoor trainer - an old TurboTrainer type of unit, with no smarts of its own - the session shows up in Strava with a short but non-zero distance and a very short duration. My best guess as to what's going on is that the distance is based on GPS jitter that makes it look like my position occasionally changes by a few feet, and the duration is a "moving time" based on those position changes. When I ride the trainer for 30 minutes, with of course an actual distance of 0, Strava typically shows a distance of about 0.1 mile and a duration of about 3 minutes.

Tagging the activity as Indoor Cycling or changing the activity type to Virtual Ride has no effect. The same activity appears with the correct duration when I upload it to Garmin Connect, but it does also show the very short distance.

To make this a post about features, here's my suggestion:

When a ride is tagged as Indoor Cycling, and has a route that's confined to a radius of 100 meters or less, and has a distance that works out to an average speed less than 1 km/hour, make Strava smart enough to recognize that the athlete was actually riding in one place for the duration of the activity and that the "moving time" calculation should be skipped.

[Jane · Accepted solution]

Hello @JimRiley 

Thanks for posting about this.  When recording indoor rides, it's important to disable GPS on your recording device.  If you don't, the GPS data in the file makes it difficult for Strava to show the correct distance and speed for your activity.  

More information here

You might also want to check out this blog post on recording indoor activities.

Thanks again for your post.  

[Jqneher]

Hi Jane

ive had a similar issue recently on my new Garmin watch, a Forerunner 255, I use it with a setting on Indoor Rides or Workouts, which automatically turn off the GPS, but the moving time in my case is longer and it isn’t cutting the pauses.

thanks

jake

[anchskier]

@Jqneher - Yes, if you are using the indoor ride/run settings, there is no way for the device to know you are pausing within the workout.  It only knows that on outdoor workouts because of the GPS location.  If you want to have a more accurate moving time for your indoor workouts, you will need to pause the activity manually (hit the stop and then resume) buttons.  

[Jqneher]

Hi @anchskier 

thanks for the response. That’s exactly what I’m doing though, pausing on my watch because the bike doesn’t have a computer, and even still it records the moving time as the whole workout time on the clock, rather than what I’ve recorded on my Garmin with the pauses. The same happens with workouts, which I’m also pausing on my watch… 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Jane]

Hi @Jqneher 

Apologies for any confusion here.  Indoor activities will always show only elapsed time.  We do not calculate moving time for indoor activities.  

[Jqneher]

Hi @Jane 

Ok, understood then if that is just standard Strava functionality. I can’t say I full understand the thinking there if the imported file from an external device, my Garmin in this case, shows a shorter workout time due to any pauses I as the athlete have chosen to make. 
Will just have to do Manual Activities in future if there is a large difference. 

[JimRiley]

Thanks for the info, Jane. That's very helpful!