Today I rode 46.9 mi as measured by by magnet based speedometer (wired). Rode really fast, and checked Strava at home (I recorded it on my smartphone during the ride). Strava says the ride was 28.6 mi. Needless to say, i'm not pleased. Missing 18 mi?? Basically it didn't record my ride home. There were no tall buildings or mountains to obstruct gps reception, and in the past I have felt Strava was reasonably accurate. Has anyone else had this problem, and is there a way to fix it? Was thinking about going to a GPS based speedometer like the Garmin Edge 520. Now i'm not so sure.

Dave

If you have a hard-wired computer, why do you need Strava as well? Obviously, one is better than the other. If you know which is correct, just 86 the incorrect one. It's not rocket science.
Just a thought--is the wheel circumference correctly set on the bike computer?
Jon

I don't use Strava necessarily as an odometer, but when it's off by almost 50%, that's really annoying. I live in a fairly rural area, and one street looks very similar to the next. Nothing much to differentiate them. Without Strava, I wouldn't have completed the ride I did today. Rode thru a bunch of unfamiliar areas. I have only lived here for 10 months, so it will take a while to learn the roads.

I also like the social media aspect of Strava. My friends can see my rides, I can compete on segments, etc. Pretty much can't do without Strava.

Dave

That pretty much sums it up. The place where it stopped recording was a rest stop. Took the pbone out to check Strava. It is possible I paused it without realizing. Though Strava usually auto starts for me. Going to chalk this one up to user error. It gives me an excuse to do that ride again. It was 47 mi of country terrain with 2700 ft of climbing. Managed 15.9 mph average. It was a beautiful sunny day too.

Dave

You measuring with an Android? My friend who rides with Android and Strava often experiences large dropouts, which I think is due to battery issues. I used to use an iPhone for the same thing and never lost part of my ride. I'm now using a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt and a wheel sensor, and my end-of-ride data is completely solid.

Your experience is why you *should* buy a Garmin or Wahoo, not why you should avoid one.

Not for Strava. All of their speed and distance calculations are solely from GPS; they don't utilize any sensors for that.

Yeah I had the same thought.

I've done that a couple of times. It is always frustrating. Or, perhaps bump the phone, and it jiggles the battery enough to shut it off.

A couple of notes. You can "Manually enter a ride" in Strava. I always lose where to do that, but in this case, you know exactly how many miles you lost. So, just upload it. You can add a time if you wish.

The other thing you can do is if you resume Strava, then it will draw a straight line from where it stopped to the current location. So, if you did more or less a straight line, then resume, and it will draw a straight line from where it stopped to the current location and count that mileage. It'll help a bit.

Of course, assuming you've already saved the ride, then it is too late.

Sometimes if I shut off the phone or something to conserve battery power, then it thinks it has crashed, and when I resume recording later, it adds in the missing time and it thinks I've been tootling along at 1 MPH.

I think Strava is much better than it was.

I've had it actually running, and ticking up time, but not counting mileage, but it hasn't done that for over a year now.

Different systems are different.

With RideWithGPS, to "pause", you must hold the button down.
With Strava, they use a circle to start and a circle to stop, and just touching it, and everything stops.

I use the Strava mapping mode a bit, and have not immediately realized that a moving dot means that it is not recording, while a TRON-like line behind me means it is recording (if I'm using a route, then I will be following a line).

I use the button on the bottom of my phone a lot to wake it up and swap between applications. But, it is also imperceptibly below the STOP button on Strava.

RideWithGPS has "handlebar" mode which is nice. So, it will activate over the top of the greeting screen.

However, if I'm wanting to run Strava or RideWithGPS while not looking at it, then I try to background the applications, so it takes multiple button presses to get back to it (less likely to be bumped).

Well I use Map my ride with Android because I can keep using it for free. Over a 60km to 100 km ride it's consistently within 400 to 600 metres of accurate with my bike computer.
It auto pauses when I stop too so never have to think about it until finishing the ride.

Currently running an Android. First time I've seen this issue. Been happy with Strava for the most part previously. As mentioned before, I suspect it may be an error on my part , but probably time to research gps units. It was annoying today stopping and pulling out the phone to check which direction to go at intersections. For now the features I'm looking for are Strava live segments, ability to hook up external speed, cadence, heart rate and power sensors, and ability to follow a pre-determined route. Would like to run unit on 3 different bikes too. Got to research more and see what is out there. Are Garmin and Wahoo pretty much the big players in the market?

Dave

Dave

​​​​​​For what it's worth, I have Garmin's fancy GPS watch with maps and everything. GPS accuracy is better on a 10 year old Edge bike computer. Not by much but enough to see if you look at the tracks. I think moving around on the wrist (now it's facing the sky now it's facing away) doesn't help.

Those are the two big ones and and of their mid range units should do what you want.
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​​​​​​This is an important distinction: many GPS units can turn by turn you through a route you planned ahead of time like on the computer. Only a few of Garmin's most expensive and I think the Karoo call do it where you touch a spot on the map on the unit and it comes up with a route and guides you there.

I just have garmin sync load my Edge 500 rides to Strava. Then i can see both

I can't imagine a circumstance where Strava would be off by that amount, unless the monitoring was paused and eventually restarted, either manually or inadvertently. I presume you can pull up a visual representation of the route. Does it look accurate? I run Strava on my smart phone in my jersey pocket - I record total distance for maintenance purposes. The only time my phone Strava errs is when I pause it at a rest stop and forget to restart when we set out again. If I remember to restart sometime later, the program plots a straight line from where I paused it to where I restarted it - strictly as the crow flies, and not following any roadway. Obviously, the total elapsed distance reflects this straight line route, rather then the meandering route that I actually rode. Apart from these user-error instances, I have never had cell-phone Strava fail to provide an accurate route or distance, even though I am frequently out of cell phone coverage (i.e., a standard nav program eg Google Maps, fails to load because of no coverage)

If you permit Google Maps Timeline to run by default it will record GPS data, same as activity apps. And the data can be downloaded and converted to a format Strava can use. Handy if Strava glitches, which happens fairly often.

I've permitted Google to track my activities by default, which came in handy when I was hit by a car last year. It confirmed my version of the incident. It also enables recreating lost Strava logs. The Google data is private (well, just between us, Google, the NSA, and every hacker in China and Russia). And we can delete it anytime.

I use Wahoo Fitness to record rides, and upload to Strava later. Wahoo Fitness has been more reliable, low resource, and free. The app interface doesn't show much data but records quite a bit of data that will appear in Strava. If Wahoo Fitness gets closed before a ride is through, it just stops at that point and records the ride so far to Strava. I need to remember to restart recording. But that's happened only once in almost three years.

Are there different versions of Strava? Mine has auto pause and restart. You do have to hit start to begin with though.

I don't know. Strava wanted to upgrade my phone a couple of days ago, but I don't think it did it properly, and I can't seem to go back to that screen.

Mine doesn't seem to autopause properly when riding, so it might show my average speed much lower than it should. But, it fixes most of that during the post analysis.

28 miles is 46 kilometers.
You have your speedo setup incorrectly. You really thought you road 46 miles?

Ha, could be, but probably a coincidence.
Strava shows the ride on a map. So it's easy to see if the ride recording was cut off at that rest stop.