For a couple of years my main XC bike (2014 Salsa El Mariachi Ti) has had issues with my Garmin bike computers (Edge 510, 520, and 130) pausing mid-ride when I wasn’t actually stopped. This shows up as the head unit briefly flipping to a paused symbol (⏸), before returning to recording. Post-ride, when reviewing data in rubiTrack, the red callouts on the route indicate the pause locations and show they’d last for a couple of seconds. While I couldn’t reliably reproduce the pauses, they seemed to happen whenever I’d stop pedaling. It seemed to be more common when on tight/twisty trails where GPS positioning is spotty, but it’d also happen while moving at 10-20 MPH on straight, clear-sky areas. It almost seemed like the Garmin was choosing to pause when I stopped pedaling, an indicator that maybe the computer wasn’t aware the speed sensor was still moving.
On all of my bikes I have the Garmin Bike Speed Sensor fit around the rear hub and computer set to autopause when stopped, but the problem only happened on the El Mariachi Ti. It did not happen when using the older Garmin GSC 10 magnet/reed switch speed sensor which mounts to a chainstay. It also doesn’t happen on either of the steel (El Mariachi SS or Vaya) or carbon fiber (Mukluk or Camber) bikes, so I accepted it and figured the problem to be the wheel speed sensor. After acquiring an Edge 130 bundle I tried the new wheel speed sensor, but the problem persisted and got me thinking…
The solution ended up being simple: move the speed sensor to the front wheel. On an A/B test at River Bends Park where I did one lap with the sensor on the rear wheel, then another two with it on the front, the issue didn’t stopped appearing when the sensor was on the front.
Thinking it through I can only conclude that the problem was caused by the frame material. The sensor is detected by the head unit and seems to work fine the time, but perhaps the signal is sufficiently degraded that connectivity is sometimes lost. I suspect that then the unit falls back to pausing based on GPS signal + pedaling.
