I get weird straight lines in my Strava records. Places you can’t actually walk or run. Example here, my dog walk had me walking as the crow flies across a piece of land you can’t walk across (the diagonal line is actually not even where I went or was). Same thing happened to my parkrun route this morning.
What am I doing wrong?
I also get random times and distances that don’t “match” what I’ve actually done.
TIA for any tips.
Hi! It looks as though your GPS signal is a bit spotty. Have a look at Strava's troubleshooting suggestions:
support.strava.com/hc/en-us...
Thanks I will take a look. A bit of a newbie here! At least I can manually add what goes really wrong, but a shame I can't edit the ones that are nearly right!
Are you using your phone to get your Strava data? I changed my phone settings to get the best GPS possible.
Another possibility is that your phone is going to sleep or into low power mode, and the GPS is failing at that point (although if that was the problem, I would expect it to happen sooner than it did in the example you've posted).
For activities that have recorded wrongly, in the web version of Strava you can ask it to correct the distance (click on your activity; underneath the distance figure there is clickable text 'distance ?'. If you click on this you can ask strava to correct it - it is reversible if you don't like what it does). Sometimes it works well.
Thanks. That could well be it, phone going to sleep. My other tracker (Nike) automatically stays “awake “ if it’s on so I haven’t suffered GPS loss of signal before. I often use both. Nike is purely to track all runs. Strava is runs plus any other activity so for me it’s not so vital if not accurate for runs as I have all that data in Nike.
Appreciate the help, starting to make sense now!
Hi Joster
I have the same problem with strava. I have bought a garmin 35 running watch (around £99) which picks up gps accurately, every time. I wouldn't be without it! Good luck 😊
Strava plots a straight line between 2 points when there’s no GPS record of what happened between them. It could be your phone going to sleep. Same thing happens with my Garmin if I pause it to stop running briefly and forget to resume it until I’ve realised, by which time I’ve run a bit further. Strava can’t tell how I got between the two points, so just plots a straight line.
Dave - thank you. As in reply to Linda above I think what you say makes total sense. I never suffer loss of GPS here so it has to be something else and phone going to sleep is logical reason. I will try and set phone to stay awake! If I’m using Nike (as I always do for runs) I don’t get the issue. It’s just been on walks. Ta-da! Forum to the rescue once again. Much appreciated.
This can even happen with ”good” running watches. Cloudy weather and dense forests/tall buildings etc. One way to improve gps on Garmin watches to select ’gps + glonass’ in settings. This uses both the yankie and ruskie gps satellites at the same time. Glonass may not be as accurate as usual if Vlad is in town though.
My husband cycles to work everyday ( 22 miles there and back) and he got Strava to start recording his activity. The first time he did it, he just got a random straight line. That was it, hes not done it again!!! I think Strava can be a bit random at times, but I have found that the times it gets it right far outweighs the mishaps!! I hope you get it sorted.
Thanks!! It did it again today despite me turning my phone to “never sleep”. It also under measures my distances. Not by much but over 5 or 10K it notices. I’m not paying for it and not therefore concerned about it being super precise.
Help or advice or thoughts!
Mystery shoe delivery 😮
Help me spend £30
Hiding one's pace on Strava 
