I’m currently testing history syncing with Garmin, and my initial plan was to treat Garmin like every other service & do full-history syncing. Some people have mentioned not wanting their full history synchronized over, so I want to get a sense of how many people feel that way.
I do want my full Garmin history in CityStrides
I do not want my full Garmin history in CityStrides
0voters
For anyone who does not want their full Garmin history in CityStrides, please reply with a short note about why that is. If you notice that someone has already shared the same reason as you, feel free to click the on their post instead of typing out your reply (or not, whatever, maybe you love typing ).
I do not currently want my full Garmin history but I may at some point in the future after I review my 3000+ activities since 2008 and try to clean it up.
I’m ambivalent because my Garmin history is redundant with my MMR history which is already imported. Plus I’ve deleted some runs from my CityStrides that have very messed up GPS data that mar my Lifemap. So if it all gets imported I’ll just re-delete the screwy runs (which I’ve heard ties up the server…). But doesn’t really matter to me one way or the other.
Although I have almost all my activities in Garmin, a history sync wouldn’t be necessary for me. All my activities are synced with Strava as well and imported to CS via that channel. I can imagine that only for new joiners this would be a good feature. Perhaps it’s something that you can make optional and leave it to the user whether or not to sync the Garmin history?
I also needed to clarify that “not necessary because I already have them in CityStrides” is not a “do not want” response because Garmin syncing skips activities that already exist (by comparing the start time; if it’s exactly the same then it’s the same activity).
An interesting approach was brought up in the comments that might look something along the lines of:
new members logging in with Garmin will automatically have their full history synchronized
existing members connecting Garmin in their settings page would be prompted to choose either “connect with history sync” or “connect without history sync”
This throws a wrench into the “Sync Now” option. I’ll have to make some decisions there; skipping Garmin, or building out some UI that presents per-service sync options … I don’t really want to spend time working on a sync page with all sorts of features and options - it’s just not interesting from the “hey look what CityStrides can do” perspective… my time is way better spent on the actual site.
I’m sure I’ll learn a bunch as the Garmin history sync feature is released and actually used.
How many activities really need to be “cleaned up”? Am I just super lucky in only having 1-3 activities, ever, where the tracked activity route was wildly wrong?
Yes. The rest of us forget to start/stop our watch at least a few times a year or something like that.
On an interesting side-note - an unintended result of the CS Enhanced LifeMap is that you can see and compare GPS accuracy over time since we can identify which track is with which activity. Almost without exception, all of my bad activities fall 2015 or earlier before I switched from a Garmin 310xt to my current 920xt.
I’d say you are lucky. Roughly ~5% of my runs have a major GPS malfunction, more often in bad weather. What happens is it loses connection for some time gap and when it reconnects it just connects a straight vector to the two points before/after the gap (and I know it happens when I’m out for a run because my mile pace drops significantly).
Meanwhile my mapping in general is often a mess, even with the most sensitive and battery-draining GPS options selected on my Garmin watch/app- every second tracking, and GPS+GLONASS. But living in a dense city with tall buildings, even on good days I have to accept GPS drift and limited accuracy.
The underlying process is that it requests 7 days of activities, then schedules itself to ask for another 7 days in 30 minutes, and repeats until it gets back to 2004 (Garmin’s suggested “earliest data available” year).
There seems to be an issue within Garmin for activities older than 2016 which causes them to be incapable of syncing into CityStrides. I am working with Garmin support on this issue now.
I do want my Garmin history brought in. I finally managed to get back into my old garmin account - having moved to Strava some years ago. You’ve brought all my Strava stuff across (when I joined a few months ago) and - now I’ve connected Garmin - was expecting my list of completed streets to jump significantly. I popped in to this forum to see if I was missing something. I guess you’ve not yet automated that historical import
The underlying process is that it requests 7 days of activities, then schedules itself to ask for another 7 days in 30 minutes, and repeats until it gets back to 2004 (Garmin’s suggested “earliest data available” year).
There seems to be an issue within Garmin for activities older than 2016 which causes them to be incapable of syncing into CityStrides. I am working with Garmin support on this issue now.
If you share your profile link, I can make sure that your account is in that history sync.
on their post instead of typing out your reply (or not, whatever, maybe you love typing 
).
but it’s fun to learn.
