I don't blame this on Strava because it isn't their fault. The fault lies in the GPS on my cheap phone and perhaps the telecom that exists in this area. There is also the very real possibility that the tall buildings that are all made of metal of some sort could be interfering with the tracking. I don't know the answer but the results at the end of a run are both frustrating and amusing.
This was frustrating to me to see at the end of what I felt was a 5k and then later I looked it up to see if running a 15k with an overall time of around 32 minutes is even humanly possible. As it turns out the fastest 15k that has ever been recorded was done by Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda who ran a time of 41:05. So yeah, Strava was correct in flagging this run of mine
I wondered what could possibly happen to make this end up this way so I dug in and looked at my splits
Basically something wonky happened right at the start that teleported me at the speed of sound to the other side of town, then the GPS corrected itself but not immediately. I have seen my location do things really strange when I was getting an Uber in the past so I can kind of understand how this happens.
I joked with my friends who commented on it to tell them that I "gassed out after the first 13 km". This is easy enough to fix and not that big of a deal because I'll just crop out the teleportation and adjust it.
On other runs that I have done I have had this happen multiple times during the run and this is more frustrating because the crazy times are mixed in with my genuine pace. I do actually want to know what my pace is, so when this happens I just have to scrap the entire run's recording and just hope for better accuracy on the next one.
Cropping a run is pretty easy but honestly, I know what the solution to this thing that is happening a bit too frequently for me actually is: Get a new phone.