Originally Posted by
jadocs
If you’re talking about starting a ride while already up to speed, that doesn’t make you faster. You are essentially data doping. It’s like people who own Garmins and have it set to auto pause at 5 or 7 mph and end up with an average speed over 20 mph, but in reality couldn’t keep up with others who did 19.5 mph (real average) on the same ride.
You can always tell the people you regularly ride with who use Garmins because their average speeds are inflated on Strava.
That's not how it works at all. Strava ignores any auto-pause setting other than
on or
off. It will default any uploaded file with auto-pause on to pause only at 0mph, and its threshold is very,
very small.
Any forward movement is registered as moving time, and can easily tack 3-4 minutes onto the course of an urban ride.
If you see people with a higher average speed, they've likely manually input their wheel diameter in as larger than it actually is, or routinely change wheels/tires, which makes speed readings (and therefore distance) fluctuate. Pre-speed sensor, my Garmin 520 would routinely read about 0.2mph low. I had to manually distance correct every activity on Strava. Without a speed sensor, you can't spoof your speed by using auto-pause. You have to rely on GPS errors/inaccuracy. Maybe ride under a lot of trees.