So... one question for those in the know... with auto pause off, does it continuously record the GPS points to device storage while you're stopped? Because for very long rides (audax, touring, ultracycling, etc), that could be one argument against it.

No. When it knows you're stopped it pauses recording until you move again. It's as if time passes but nothing happens as far as the file you record knows. Just a gap.

It's a yes here as I like to see the difference between moving time and stationary time on road/gravel rides. This helps me see which routes I have done are more favorable. I don't care for constantly stopping at lights, crossings, signs, or some other issues along the way. I care to ride the bike. If I want to go to a certain part of town again I can reference prior rides to see which have a better "ride vs. total" time. With autopause off, your total and ride time will equal. Then I would have to go dig into the Trainingpeaks file to see the time spent at zero cadence to figure it out. With it on, I simply find the ride and see how it got on.

Nobody cares how fast you rode, but there can be useful information from leaving the pause on.

Now, when I do cyclocross practice I do turn autopause off and manually pause it. I also have to set my lap up at a far far end of the course to avoid accidental trip of the lap. If autopause were on, there's parts of the course you may very well be zig zagging super slow and then running a barrier and autopause trips.

Just use it judiciously.

Fun back story of a guy from a group ride years back:
I kept seeing his Strava rides for the same route we all did. But he'd always be big gap short on the mileage, but the endpoints were the same. Come to find out dude set his Garmin autopause up for like 8mph. There's a few very short hills on the ride that larger riders will certainly go slower than 8mph up. So, it was pausing during those hills.

​​​​​​You can't just look at moving vs total time? You have to write a query? If so, that's a limitation of Training Peaks. 😳

If you set autopause to not work your total time is your moving time. Otherwise if you use autopause you see both side by side right away in the ride summary.

If you disable autopause, and they're equal times, it just means an extra button or two you have to push in the app. That's all. An annoyance avoided by, gasp, using autopause.

Just saying not everyone uses TP either. So if you have only Strava, what are you going to do? It lists total time and ride time the same if you turn it off. So then you can't see the difference.

There are legit reasons to pause and legit reasons not to, like I mentioned. Autopause for this reason, off for cyclocross.

This is what my Garmin app (or the website) terms me about a ride I did. I have auto pause turned off. This info is in the details for every activity I do. If you're using a Garmin, you have this too. You can have it displayed in a grid for all your rides. Maybe TP just doesn't show it because they think people are paying for other data?

No, it shows exactly that. I'm saying it should be identical if autopause is off. As I'm telling it to keep going despite the gps thinking I am not moving. That being different above seems to make the assumption in their code that you're not moving due to a gps signal saying you're not. So they don't sum up moving time. But because, maybe I am moving very slow or the gps didn't detect the motion and I want to record the data without gaps. The reason is not wanting it to stop recording data by autopausing when I actually am doing something continuous.

I'll have to try it to see how it handles it for that situation. I looked back and hadn't had it turned off for the cross races. I'll turn it off next practice ride on the cross course and see what happens. As that would be annoying if it thinks I only "moved" for 28:30 in a 30min cross race and was zig zagging super slow course features or something super mud for 1:30 of that and it assumed I wasn't moving.

Either way, during a workout with HR-only, I would on the road certainly autopause. Otherwise you accumulate work at HR that you weren't doing. Recovering from a sweetspot HR down to low z1 may take couple minutes at a stop, but you just earned time spent at Z4, Z3, Z2, and Z1 during the drop in HR at the stop. Which is false. You earned nothing at Z4 while stopped, nada, no effort.

I ride my rollers a lot in winter. Every ride I do an LSCT (google) warmup, which involves being stationary for one minute at the end of the warmup to check HR drop. If I forget and leave Autopause ON, the timer won't record that minute if I'm actually stopped, so I have to keep pedaling very slowly in my lowest gear. Obviously I don't use the GPS for speed so my Garmin 800 is looking at my rear wheel sensor. The lowest speed that'll keep Autooause thinking I'm moving is about 2.4 mph. It might be possible to keep it working at slower speeds by simply changing it to some lower speed. I didn't experiment with that. IME using GPS to record speed is not good practice, whether one has Autpopause on or off. One could use 4 wheel sensors and just divide speed by 4. Moving time and thus average speed would then be even more accurate, but you'd get flagged on Strava for sure.

Autopause on for me. I do not need high-res time and location measurements while I'm drinking coffee mid-ride. I only turn off autopause during events like granfondos.

Off. Only in the fake world of auto-pause fans can you ride at 20mph for three hours and cover 40 miles.

I have this debate with people about long-distance driving. If you're doing 80mph across the southwest, you're probably averaging maybe 65-70 with stops and towns, at best. Everyone wants to cite 80mph as average, even though they take longer than distance/80 to finish.

Auto pause. When it's a race, I'll flag it as such on Strava, and then it treats the elapsed time as the relevant one. Of course, I don't do coffee stops on races.

While adding coffee time to my training time would significantly improve my training volume, I don't think the training effect is quite there.

Ya'll are hilarious caring this much about what other people do. Or assuming the other person cares that much either. I thought there's a word for this they use in scientific circles...........minimization. Denying other's actions to rationalize your own?

Seek out to deny what they perceive others did, that they can't.

I'll see your 20mph x 3hrs = 40mi with a mid ride coffee stop instead recorded as two separate rides. 20mph x 1hr + 20mph x 1hr. Or 20mph x 2hrs this evening then 20mph x 1hr tomorrow.........oh oh oh, we're going to redefine it so that Ashton Lambie doesn't ride track at 37mph. He goes only 8km per day! He only did two 4km pursuits that day!!!

Epic eye roll.

Recording that as two separate rides is correct. Ashton Lambie rides track at 37mph because that's start and stop... but he doesn't ride 100 miles at that speed just because he's done it in total. A four minute mile is not the same as four sixty-second quarters. I am not minimizing what others can that I can't; I'm accurately stating what others and I can do.

You seem awfully worked up for someone trying to claim you don't care that much.

But sure, keep lying to yourself. That's hilarious too.

Worked up over what a person's ride shows? Nope. Not at all. All the data is there anyway, so no worries at all. Now, to be worked up over folks gallivanting around like the lord of bike data political correctness...........that's something worth giving enough time to at least have a little fun with you and humor myself. As it goes "I ain't mad bro"........I'm just having a good time at it at this point at your expense.

Why does a cafe' ride have to be "correct"? If you can do it that way, isn't your original bah humbugging about average speed of an autopaused ride largely irrelevant? Strava or other services don't credit people for stopped time, so they credit you for 40mi, not 60mi. And it displays both moving and total time. It even labels it as such so one knows which is which so as to not assume "oh, that person rode 60mi at 20mph nonstop".

There is no confusion. I think you're confused, and possibly ego hurt over what others do. And you keep using words like "fake" and "correct" like you're disproving someone's presentation of their ride data. Go ahead and send some strongly worded emails to Strava about their "fake" ride data and how they can make it more "correct".

Ya'll are hillarious.

I'm laughing at people who are deluding themselves. You're offended that I'm being honest about what you do instead of what you claim. Laterz.

All my Garmin/Strava stats are private, so it only matters to me what i'm recording.

I think that there's a healthy gray area in the debate, and that's what were seeing, here.

IMO, when it comes to ride duration, there's a really large chunk of real estate where stopping really doesn't help moving speed and it can often negatively impact performance. If I'm in the middle of a 3-7 hour ride, stopping at a gas station for 5 minutes, to fill up my bottles and stuff a couple of snacks in my pockets, isn't going to provide some magic recuperation that'll bump my performance envelope for the remainder of the ride. Going further, stopping for a half hour or more often leaves me with a horrible case of "café legs," and my post-stop performance often suffers quite badly (which is why I've learned to avoid long stops on long rides). This in mind, I have no problem with someone claiming a 5 hour century (or whatever) even though their elapsed time was 5hrs 7min because of a couple of 5min pit-stops.

Breaking up something like an hour long ride in to 20min max efforts, with 10 min of rest between, and claiming a 40km hour would be super cheesy, but I can't say that I've ever seen or heard of someone doing anything remotely like that.

There are people who run 15 minute 5ks by walking up a hill, starting their Garmins just after they start running down, stopping them just before the bottom, walking back up, and continuing the recording just after they start running again. 😳 Not as races, just because.

Like... for real? Not just Slowtwitch legend, or something? 'cause that's cuckoo for coco puffs.

And everyone else is laughing at you for divining the One Truth™ on something that's entirely subjective and personal preference. Preaching the gospel has always been tough sledding, though.



Kinda funny- Garmin manuals describe auto pause as "This feature is helpful if your ride includes stop lights or other places where you need to slow down or stop." Almost as if people are using this optional feature exactly as intended Maybe what we really need is a governing body to make sure that all data for recreational rides is recorded in a uniform manner, as decided by a self-selected group of the purest, most pious cyclists. Hard to say.

I must be getting older because I spend more time lately saying "WTF is wrong with people?"

Autopause off. For the kind of rides I do, it makes sense as I want to know my actual average speed.

It results in laughable math. Y'all can keep driving your One Truths as well; the lack of self-awareness is amusing. Also with the claims of hurt ego when it looks very much as if you're upset at being told your numbers are just incorrect.

Quiet time for you now.

Easy to miss my other post in this thread I suppose, but it said that there isn't really a wrong answer to the auto pause question. If you could explain how you're getting "one truth" out of that, it would be very much appreciated.

This hurt ego, upset, who's maddest on the internet business- leave it off I haven't even said whether I use auto pause or not, but you've decided both that I'm wrong and upset about it...good for a laugh, which we could all use in these trying times.