Hi all,

I started using a Garmin 200 since Christmas instead of the Strava app on my phone. I’m finding that the Garmin isn’t detecting when I’ve finished a segement. For example, a segment will show total time as 9 minutes and moving time of 6. I know exactly where the segement in question starts and finishes and I know I didn’t stop inbetween. Looking at the map of the ride on Strava, it seems like there weren’t enough GPS positions being recording for Strava to detect when I finished the segement.

Anyone else experienced this?

I’ve never had the issue you’ve described – does the segment finish then you immediately turn back on yourself or something? Strava (the Garmin has nothing to do with detecting segments) should interpolate the data to “guess” when you hit the end of the segment.

As you’ve noticed the sampling rate of the 200 is much lower than your phone or a 500/800 which IMO makes it less suited for MTB use as it won’t pick up tight twists and turns properly. I generally find Strava will pick up segments fine when using it though.

Never had an issue with my Edge 200 and strava and the Garmin sample rate is one per second (which is the same across the 200 & 500) so you would have to be travelling pretty fast for errors to creep in there.

From what I can gather online the 200 sample rate of every 60s, whereas the Strava App does 4s and 1s now (on some phones) when it notices lots of movement. If you use some of the Strava comparison sites (forget their names now – RaceShape I think) you can trace a phone vs Garmin and you’ll see the Garmin skipping a lot as it jumps across from point to point its recorded.

Strava doesnt (didnt?) interpolate between the points to work out when you “crossed the line” on a segment, so its down to when the next point gets recorded. Its why a lot of phone users used to be quicker than Garmins (500/800s) when the app used to only do 4s intervals as sometimes it would cut time off for them vs the proper 1s track of the better Garmins.

Running the same setup and never had an issue, are you sometimes moving very slow so the Garmin might think you’re stationary? 😉

It seems to be a problem if I stop after finishing one segment and before I start another. The tracking doesn’t start again until I start moving, consequently the time it’s taken me to do the first segement is the actual time it’s taken me to ride it + the two minutes rest I’ve had before carrying on. This is all despite crossing the ‘finish line’ of the first segment.

I’m not fussed about the actual time per se, but it’s messing with my head to see very inconsistent timings.

When you are “crossing the line”, how far are you going past it? You need to go a good way further than you think to get around any GPS positioning errors. You might think you’re 5m clear but GPS still thinks you are in what Strava considers the segment. I find this a lot at Swinley, only way to get accurate times is not to stop until there is somewhere with a good 20-30m between segments to stop in.