Your Strava Pace Is Incorrect
I track, you track, seemingly everybody tracks.
Whether you use Garmin, Strava, Nike Run Club or your device’s tracking app, every runner I know relies on tech to measure their miles and pace.
But what if these apps are wrong?
I noticed that Strava was consistently tracking my runs faster than normal awhile ago.
Since I hadn’t been working on speed at all, I found that suspicious.
So I dug into the app itself.
The first “feature” I discovered is that Strava automatically updates the time and average pace based on how I labeled the run.
If you label a run anything other than a race (None, Workout or Long Run) the app shows a “moving time.”
Based on what I read in support forums, “moving time” eliminates any time spent moving in a way that the Strava algorithm decides is too slow.
Strava explains that runners can get a more accurate pace by consistently manually pausing the app while mid-run — like at traffic lights — but I generally find this to be a pain in the ass.
The other option is to not pause at all, which “uses your device’s accelerometer to detect running motion” so it’s unclear whether this pacing would include walk breaks or not.
