Garmin 405 Accuracy
I did some intervals tonight, 6*1200.
I often hear people complain about the accuracy of a race course, thinking their Garmin is 100% accurate. Take a look at this photo, I had a great signal, generally it was within 16ft. I can assure you that I ran all three laps in lane one, however the Garmin has me going into the grass and out into lane 7 in one lap.
Still, it’s rather remarkable, but proof that the Garmin is not 100% accurate.
What did your elevation graph look like? I tend to assume the distance is pretty much accurate but have never been sure about the elevation. In fact one race it had a huge spike in elevation and I don’t remember any hill at the point it indicated.
It had a few spikes, showing a few changes that were +/- 15 feet, I assume the track is flat!
I’d say that is the biggest area that can improve with Garmin GPS is the elevation tracking.
Much to the dismay of athletes world-wide, the elevation computed by commercial (non-military) GPS systems will never be accurate. Quick research, taking into account a military aspect, will explain why this is so…
The watch may be more accurate than you think. I would posit that the overhead image of the track isn’t registered correctly. It is far more telling of the garmin’s accuracy by how your plots stack on top of each other than how they map around the track.
I mean your plots aren’t more than *one lane* off from *each other* —sure they don’t match the track, but that just means that map is off, not the measurements.
I would have to agree with Nobody (that sounds funny).
The image overlays on programs like google earth don’t exactly match long/lats unless you can see them in 3D. Not sure exactly why, but maybe it has something to do with the curvature of the earth? I also tend to believe that the garmin is more accurate than you think.
When you stopped, was the distance recorded accurately on the garmin?