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My GF and I did 3 laps of Moors Valley today. I don't use strava in a competitive manner, just to keep a track of distances covered etc. However I found today that my girlfriend allegedly covered half a mile more than me. So which one is accurate? Is it due to auto pause not being on the ball for restarts?
I know I shouldn't care.... I know, I know...
I use my Apple watch for the same thing with Strava. Over a 25 mile loop, mine logged an extra 2 miles for some reason!
Different devices take location measurements at different rates, with different accuracies, which Strava then joins up with straight lines. It's why short segments are pointless.
Likely neither is accurate. However, just phone or is it a Garmin etc and in particular with a wheel sensor? Phones vary a lot especially different makes and models. A wheel sensor though will make a big difference as it's tracking the real miles based on wheel rotation rather than approximation based on GPS sample points which varies by device. GPS in general may shortcut in poor reception areas or stuff like Garmin defaults to variable sample rates depending how much detail it thinks it needs (can change it to sample a point every second, which may increase the file size a bit, but could be more accurate).
I take it all with a pinch of salt and I've set Stava to not post to leaderboards now as it's pointless comparing with other people (especially as I'm shit compared to them 😁), along with sensitive trail issues. Strava is just a ride tracker for me now.
My girlfriend is using Strava on an iPhone (therefore with additional cell tower location services) and I'm using a Lezyne Mini GPS which I suspect isn't as hot on the location accuracy.
Thanks for confirming things, I thought I was going mad.
I did a 70 mile ride with a mate the other day. He finished 10 minutes before me.. However on Strava it appears that I climbed over 500 foot more which provided a suitable excuse 😀