Strava Elevation Discrepency

CleeRider

Today I wanted to ride a 30 mile route with 2000 feet of climbing (build up to a sportive) so I spent a while trying to plot different routes using the Strava route planner, and finally came up with the perfect ride for my needs.
Went out and completed said route this afternoon, uploaded it to Strava only to find I had climbed 1400 feet

Looking back at the elevation chart for the planned route and adding up each individual climb, the 1400 is accurate but it's still showing 2000 feet for my planned route.

Anyone else experienced this? Feeling annoyed. Grrrr!

hector88

There is a small 'correct elevataion' link on the ride page next to the elevation on the upper right area. Clicking that should help.

supermurph09

CleeRider wrote:

Today I wanted to ride a 30 mile route with 2000 feet of climbing (build up to a sportive) so I spent a while trying to plot different routes using the Strava route planner, and finally came up with the perfect ride for my needs.
Went out and completed said route this afternoon, uploaded it to Strava only to find I had climbed 1400 feet

Looking back at the elevation chart for the planned route and adding up each individual climb, the 1400 is accurate but it's still showing 2000 feet for my planned route.

Anyone else experienced this? Feeling annoyed. Grrrr!

Apologies if I misunderstand, but you did your ride, looked at your strava analysis and added up the individual elevation of the segments showing and it came to 1400, but your ride total was 2000? That's quite normal as not every foot of elevation you do will be classified as a segment.

dabber

The "discrepancy" you mention is minor in Strava terms.

Take Steve Abraham who has started riding again after his injury attempting the year distance record.
At the moment he is riding on a recumbent, one legged, around Milton Keynes bowl. yesterday he rode just over 90 miles with an elevation of 3150 feet. It must be an awfully bumpy bowl. For some reason Strava must be calculating something very wrongly.

markhewitt1978

No I believe he's talking about the Strava route planner vs what Strava says after the ride is complete? Nothing to do with segments.

ugo.santalucia

The plotting tool overestimates elevation gain by 20-30%

CleeRider

ugo.santalucia wrote:

The plotting tool overestimates elevation gain by 20-30%

That sounds about right from my experience - time to find a new route plotter...

ugo.santalucia

CleeRider wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

The plotting tool overestimates elevation gain by 20-30%

That sounds about right from my experience - time to find a new route plotter...

They are all crap one way or another. Bikehike is the most accurate for elevation, but it doesn't allow to save a file, so it's quite pointless

triban

Strava plotting tool over estimated my weekend ride elevation by just 6% more than was recorded on my garmin 500, from around 4500ft total climbing. Seems reasonable as it is just a guess. Plus, weather can have an effect on the devices accuracy; it might well be that you climbed 2000ish ft, but your device didn't record it correctly? try the same route again and see what figure you get.

i recently did a route that i know is circa 750 meters from having done it multiple times. it was a weird day weather wise. low pressure, rained a lot, foggy. when i got home my garmin had recorded it at just 250 meters climbing.

ugo.santalucia

triban wrote:

Strava plotting tool over estimated my weekend ride elevation by just 6% more than was recorded on my garmin 500, from around 4500ft total climbing. Seems reasonable as it is just a guess. Plus, weather can have an effect on the devices accuracy; it might well be that you climbed 2000ish ft, but your device didn't record it correctly? try the same route again and see what figure you get.

i recently did a route that i know is circa 750 meters from having done it multiple times. it was a weird day weather wise. low pressure, rained a lot, foggy. when i got home my garmin had recorded it at just 250 meters climbing.

Sounds like your Garmin is not very accurate either.

Pressure varies, but as much to influence your altimeter 3 fold....

Everyone I talked to and has a decent altimeter agrees Strava is 20-30% out

CleeRider

This has nothing to do with altimeters or Garmins... I plotted a route that showed 2000 feet of elevation. If I look at the elevation chart for the plotted route and add up each individual climb, it comes to 1400 feet. Therefore it's simply the Strava route plotter that is at fault.

ugo.santalucia

CleeRider wrote:

This has nothing to do with altimeters or Garmins... I plotted a route that showed 2000 feet of elevation. If I look at the elevation chart for the plotted route and add up each individual climb, it comes to 1400 feet. Therefore it's simply the Strava route plotter that is at fault.

Unless you ride in the Alps, there is a lot of hidden climbing in between the bigger climbs... ondulations of the road can build up to 5-6 metres per mile. You are not riding on a flood plain

t4tomo

my 43 mile ride on saturday:
- ride with GPS says 2307 ft,
- strava recorded on gamin 800 says 3153 ft.
I've not tried plotting it asroute on Strava but i can guarantee it will be a different figure again.
:?:

devhads

Dabber wrote:

The "discrepancy" you mention is minor in Strava terms.

Take Steve Abraham who has started riding again after his injury attempting the year distance record.
At the moment he is riding on a recumbent, one legged, around Milton Keynes bowl. yesterday he rode just over 90 miles with an elevation of 3150 feet. It must be an awfully bumpy bowl. For some reason Strava must be calculating something very wrongly.

Milton Keynes Bowl circuit does have a climb on it as it's an ampitheatre shape rather than a bowl. 90 miles is approximately 160 laps so only about 19 feet per lap which seems about right.

milleman

I have used Strava for a few years now, most of my cycling companions have Garmins and Strava consistently shows approximately 20% more altitude than Garmin when I compare route data.

The distance is pretty much spot on.

dabber

devhads wrote:

Dabber wrote:

The "discrepancy" you mention is minor in Strava terms.

Take Steve Abraham who has started riding again after his injury attempting the year distance record.
At the moment he is riding on a recumbent, one legged, around Milton Keynes bowl. yesterday he rode just over 90 miles with an elevation of 3150 feet. It must be an awfully bumpy bowl. For some reason Strava must be calculating something very wrongly.

Milton Keynes Bowl circuit does have a climb on it as it's an ampitheatre shape rather than a bowl. 90 miles is approximately 160 laps so only about 19 feet per lap which seems about right.

You live and learn. :oops: Thanks for that, I'd imagined it as a standard type bowl.

sloppyschleckonds

Plotted a ride last week on strava, came in at 7700ft.

Ride complete showing 7700ft on Garmin, 9700ft on strava phone app :roll:

norvernrob

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

Plotted a ride last week on strava, came in at 7700ft.

Ride complete showing 7700ft on Garmin, 9700ft on strava phone app :roll:

That's strange, the Strava app reads 10-20% under the Garmin reading for me. The only exceptions are the really hilly Peak District Sportive routes - for instance the route said 7,300ft of climbing, my Garmin said 7,350 and the Strava app 7,264. Why they're so close on the really hilly rides I don't know.

bartimaeus

Route planner gives you elevation based on contours you cross. Your GPS will give you altitude based on very dodgy satellite fixes, and if you have a barometric altimeter you'll get something better from that... so you can record a fair amount of elevation gain on your altimeter without crossing any contours. Personally I always let Strava correct my elevation gain as I know I don't live 20m below sea level - and that way my rides are measured consistently.

It's 'a number'.

Bozman

I've got a 500 Garmin and a mate has an 800, we rode a 50 mile route together and at the end of the ride there was an 800' difference, 2700' and 3500'. If you tap the elevation adjustment on Strava it knocks it down even further, we've had this on several occasions and from what I can gather the two devices read elevation differently.
I also run an app on my phone when I ride and that is usually pretty close to the 500, while Strava is usually 30% less.
I've just given up on the elevation reading now.

Anonymous

I assumed the record rate that your Garmin is set to would make a difference to climbing accuracy?
If its only recording data every 4 seconds (rather than 1) would you miss out on some climbing data?

Also, be careful of the elevation correction on strava. It took a massive chunk off of one ride I did!
If I delete the ride, will it then upload again (with the original information it took) from the Garmin?

triban

ugo.santalucia wrote:

triban wrote:

Strava plotting tool over estimated my weekend ride elevation by just 6% more than was recorded on my garmin 500, from around 4500ft total climbing. Seems reasonable as it is just a guess. Plus, weather can have an effect on the devices accuracy; it might well be that you climbed 2000ish ft, but your device didn't record it correctly? try the same route again and see what figure you get.

i recently did a route that i know is circa 750 meters from having done it multiple times. it was a weird day weather wise. low pressure, rained a lot, foggy. when i got home my garmin had recorded it at just 250 meters climbing.

Sounds like your Garmin is not very accurate either.

Pressure varies, but as much to influence your altimeter 3 fold....

Everyone I talked to and has a decent altimeter agrees Strava is 20-30% out

That's science for you! My garmin is as accurate as anyone else's and routinely records the same elevation data as my friends garmin 810 to within a handful of meters after 4-6hrs of cycling, with the exception of this ONE occassion during adverse conditions that can have an impact on accuracy, and did. i was on my own that time, so wasn't able to compare it at all.

i'll try plotting another route on strava, but so far my real world results are no where near 20-30% out... thats just my experience, it's not something for you to be right about and me wrong. and i'm sure there are many user here that would agree the the 500 is decent.

thegibdog

ugo.santalucia wrote:

CleeRider wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

The plotting tool overestimates elevation gain by 20-30%

That sounds about right from my experience - time to find a new route plotter...

They are all crap one way or another. Bikehike is the most accurate for elevation, but it doesn't allow to save a file, so it's quite pointless

I use Bikehike, it let's me save the file to my computer with no problems.

whoof

GPS accuracy for height is about +/- 10 m for a given point. That's quite a range.

harry-s

whoof wrote:

GPS accuracy for height is about +/- 10 m for a given point. That's quite a range.

It's not that good, - more like 40 - 50m, on a good day. The problem is the orientation of the constellation of SVs. To get decent geometry for a vertical fix the signals from SVs near the horizon need to be computed with those from overhead. However, the nearer the horizon you get, the more the signal suffers from interference, - it has more atmosphere to travel through, and the signal to noise ratio make the signals unreliable. Also, the nearer the horizon you get, the more likely there are to be obstructions, - buildings, trees etc. Generally, any SV below an elevation of about 15 degrees is not much use. That's why recreational GPS has a barometric option.

norvernrob

Bozman wrote:

I've got a 500 Garmin and a mate has an 800, we rode a 50 mile route together and at the end of the ride there was an 800' difference, 2700' and 3500'. If you tap the elevation adjustment on Strava it knocks it down even further, we've had this on several occasions and from what I can gather the two devices read elevation differently.
I also run an app on my phone when I ride and that is usually pretty close to the 500, while Strava is usually 30% less.
I've just given up on the elevation reading now.

I use a 200 and my mate an 810, last weekends ride read almost the same on both units (around 5,500ft). I also ran the Strava app on my phone, and that came up with 4,500ft. We did a route that had supposedly 3,500ft, Garmins said 3,800ish and Strava 2,800. Basically Strava removes ~20% of elevation on all my rides except a couple of really hilly ones. It seems to me that Strava isn't very good at calculating elevation when there are a lot of ups and downs on a route.

Strange that others are getting higher readings from Strava than their Garmins.

stevie63

I always find Strava seems to read low, but I think that is because in Norfolk we don't have proper hills but we do still have lumpy roads which it seems to find hard to track.

jameses

I have found there to be a big discrepancy between Garmin models as well. I use a 200 and regularly ride with friends who have 510 and 810, and one who uses a Suunto watch. They always end up several hundred feet more elevation gain than me (case in point this morning - 41 mile ride, 2700 feet on my 200, 3300 feet on the Suunto). I take the figures with a pinch of salt and use it as motivation to get out and do a bit more climbing!