Pace showing too fast on Strava after merge

[fulmar2]

I had a person contact me about their pace looking too fast after they uploaded the merged GPS files to Strava. I pulled my hair out for a few hours, but found the answer on a Strava Help page (link to cited article). Here is the important part of that page:

If an activity is tagged as a race, we will use elapsed time (and speed/pace based on elapsed time) as all stops count as part of your race time.

All I did was tag the user's activity as a race, and the pace looked perfect after that.

How to fix Strava Pace too high after a merge

Before and After:

Before and After