Garmin in the bike park: how to record a lift day so the numbers make sense

A Garmin cycling activity assumes that when the wheels are turning, you are riding. On a bike park day that assumption fails every ten minutes. You roll onto the chair, the bike hangs on the hook and the watch keeps recording: 8 to 12 km/h uphill for seven minutes, heart rate dropping, distance ticking along. Then you drop in, ride for three minutes at 30 to 40 km/h, and repeat.

By the afternoon the file says you rode for five hours at an average of 11 km/h and climbed 1 800 metres. None of it is true. You rode for maybe 70 minutes, you climbed nothing, and the number you care about, how many runs you did and how fast the good one was, is not in there at all. Auto Pause does not help: it triggers on a stop, and a chairlift never stops. Riders on the Venu forum report the opposite problem, Auto Pause firing on slow technical sections mid-run.

Strava inherits every bit of it. Your weekly distance looks heroic, your average speed looks like a commute, and anyone looking at the ride sees one five-hour blob on the map with the lift line drawn through it. The riders on MTBR and Singletrack World have been swapping fixes for this for years. None of them is built in.

Three things come up in every thread, and it is worth being precise about what each one does.

The “Downhill” activity type

Garmin Connect lets you change a ride’s type to MTB Downhill, and some newer devices show it as a profile. On most watches, as fēnix 8 owners found on Garmin’s forum, it is only available in Connect after the ride, not as something you start on the wrist. And it does not work like skiing: it does not disregard the uphill rides. What it does add is a “Runs” count, which Connect computes from the elevation profile and which starts a new run at every short uphill on the trail, even a dozen metres. A rolling trail with three little rises becomes four runs. More on that in the FAQ.

Auto Pause

Pauses the timer when speed drops below a threshold. A chairlift moves at a steady 8 to 12 km/h, which is above the threshold on every default profile, so the lift is recorded as riding. Set the threshold higher and the watch pauses in the middle of slow rock gardens instead.

The ski and snowboard profiles

These are the only built-in activities that know lifts exist. Garmin’s own manual describes it: Auto Run and Auto Pause are on by default, the timer pauses when you stop moving downhill and when you board the chairlift. That is exactly what a bike park needs, which is why people on the Instinct forum suggest a custom activity based on Snowboard. The catch is that the detection was tuned for snow, not dirt. Forerunner 955 owners report it counting 36 runs for 12 real lift rides, lift-line time landing inside runs, and Connect showing 9 runs where Strava showed 34. You also end up with a snowboarding day in July in your training history and on Strava, until you change the sport type by hand.

These are the fixes that come up on the forums, in the order people usually try them.

1. Pause by hand on every lift

Press STOP when you sit on the chair, START when you drop in. It works, it costs nothing, and it needs you to remember two presses on every single lap, with gloves on, for a whole day. Miss one and that lap’s lift ride is back in your ride time. It also gives you no run count unless you press LAP at the top as well, which makes it three presses.

2. Record as snowboard, fix the sport later

Pick the snowboard activity, ride, and change the sport type to cycling in Connect afterwards. Lifts are mostly excluded, you get a run count, and you get the run-count errors described above. On the watch the fields are ski fields, so there is no cycling cadence or power even if you have the sensors. Garmin’s training metrics treat the day as skiing until you edit it.

3. Cut the file afterwards

Record the whole day, then open the FIT file in a tool such as ADZE or FIT File Tools, delete the lift sections and upload the descents as separate activities. A rider on Singletrack World describes doing exactly this: you get clean downhill segments, and you lose your weekly totals, your ride count goes up by twelve, and you spend the evening at the computer. Strava segments work, because each file is a real ride.

4. A second Strava account for park days

Some people keep bike park days off their main Strava entirely, so the averages stay clean. It solves the Strava statistics problem and nothing else: the watch file is still a five-hour blob, and you log into the right account before every ride.

Everything above exists because the stock activity cannot tell a chairlift from a descent. A Connect IQ app can, because the signal is clear: slow and steadily rising is a lift, fast and dropping is a run. Speed, vertical rate and GPS together are enough to make the call without you touching a button. That is what Bikepark app does, and since this is our app, here is how it works and where it falls short, in the same terms as the workarounds above.

You press START once at the bottom of the first run and STOP once at the end of the day. On the first ride up the app learns the lift line; from then on it recognises the chair in about ten seconds. The recording pauses on the way up and lift time collects on its own counter. The moment the next lift is confirmed, the run that just ended gets its card: time, distance, descent, top speed, heart rate. It shows for 15 seconds and comes back with one button as the Last run page, which is what you look at on the way up.

Runs are counted between confirmed lifts, not at every rise in the trail, so the figure matches what you would count yourself. If you want to end a run by hand, LAP does it. For days without a lift, shuttle days and pedal-up trails, there is an ENDURO mode that counts the whole ride and lets you mark a break on BACK or LAP.

What you get in the file is a normal cycling activity with the bike park fields attached: ride time without the lifts, lift time as its own number, one lap per run. It lands in Garmin Connect like any ride and goes on to Strava through the connection you already have.

Where it falls short: the detection leans on GPS. Open chairlifts work well. Enclosed gondolas and dense tree cover are the hard cases, because the signal in a cabin or under a canopy can drop out long enough to blur a segment boundary. A detection error shifts that segment and the stats tied to it, nothing else. This is why the first two trial days are free and start only when you press START on the watch: ride your own park before you decide.

One table, the same four questions for every approach: does the lift stay out of ride time, do you get a run count, do you get per-run stats, and what does it cost you on the day.

If you ride a park twice a year, manual pause is fine. If you ride one every other weekend, you will stop pressing buttons by the third lap and go back to the blob; that is where the file cutting and the second account come from, and where an app earns its place.

Whatever method you choose, the file goes through the same pipe: the watch saves a FIT file, Connect imports it and, if you have linked the accounts, forwards it to Strava. The differences are in what is inside the file.

• Stock MTB activity: one ride, lift time included in moving time, average speed dragged down, elevation gain counted on the lift. Strava shows the same. Segments on the descents still match, because the GPS track is there.
• Manual pause: one ride with the lift time removed from the timer; the GPS track still shows the lift line, so the map looks the same but the numbers are right. No laps unless you press LAP.
• Snowboard profile: a skiing activity with runs as laps. Connect’s Training Load treats it as skiing until you change the sport; Strava shows it under winter sports until you edit it.
• Cut file: a dozen short rides. Totals, ride count and “longest ride” all change meaning. Each segment effort is clean.
• Lift-aware app: one cycling activity, lift time excluded from ride time, one lap per run with its own stats, plus the bike park fields in the Connect IQ section below the activity. Strava takes it like any ride: segments, kudos and leaderboards behave normally.

One thing no method changes: Connect’s own “Runs” figure for the Downhill profile is computed from elevation, so it can still show a different number than the watch. The right number from the app is in the Connect IQ section, not in the Downhill summary.

For what it is worth, this is how a park day goes with the app on a fēnix or epix, after a season of using it.

1. Install from the Connect IQ Store at home, with the phone next to the watch. Starting a trial day needs the phone connected once; riding does not.
2. Set the mode before the day: PARK for lifts, ENDURO for shuttles and pedal-ups. On the watch under Settings, or in the Connect IQ app on the phone.
3. At the bottom of the first run: START. Then forget the watch until the top.
4. On the chair, glance at the Last run page. The card appears by itself about ten seconds after the lift is confirmed.
5. End of the day: STOP, save. Check the Connect IQ section in Connect for runs, lifts and the two times.

If you ride a park with a gondola or a lot of forest on the lift line, do the first day on the free trial and look at the run count in the evening. If it matches what you counted, you are set. If it is off, the gondola is the likely reason, and manual LAP at the top is the safety net.