Walking Speed
Hiking Practice
In 2018 I undertook my first really long distance walk spending 35 days walking the 1000 km Bibbulmun Track in Western Australia. In preparation for this walk I spent the 18 months prior setting myself a number of physical challenges to see what I was physically capable of. The aim of these challenges wasn’t about breaking or setting records it was about working out how much annual leave I needed to take from my job and based on that, what I needed to achieve each day.
This article discusses why you should know your walking speed and in addition, looks at the health implications of walking speed as we age.
Walking Speed and Hiking
So what do I mean by walking speed? In most cases hikers will typically take walking speed to be the distance travelled while walking over a set period of time. In fact my Garmin GPS measures walking pace in this way. In working out my walking pace I take the distance travelled over a set period of time but also include breaks because I want to know how many kilometres I need to average each walking day.
When working out my walking speed for hiking I don’t do things by half, in that way I have an obsessive personality. In 2016 when Gill and I walked the 232 km Larapinta Trail I averaged 17 minutes per kilometre or roughly 3km per hour; certainly not a record breaking pace by any means!
As mentioned over the next 18 months I undertook a number of on-trail challenges in a variety of terrain to better refine what distance I could expect when I started the Bibbulmun Track. These included:
- Walking the 145 km Canberra Centenary Walk in three days (and 35° to 37° degrees celsius temperatures)
- Biggest day 39.6 km
- Walking the112 km from Kiandra to Canberra in three days (the last section of the Australian Alps Walking Track)
- Biggest day 58.8 km
- Walking the 53 km to Mount Bimberi and back in one day
- 53 km in a single day
- In addition I took part in a number of walking events that included big distances on back to back days including distance between 24-42 km per day.
The end result of this extensive (and perhaps excessive) testing was I ended up with two hiking speeds with a fully loaded multi-day hiking pack. I allowed some leeway on these speeds which provided a buffer in case of unforeseen events. These were:
- The first was an average speed in the Australian Alps which I set at 2.75 km per hour. This is also the figure I use for beach walking on soft sand
- Flat is not typically a word you associate with Australia’s Alpine region and soft beach sand will really slow you down
- The second was my average speed based around a ‘typical hike’. By typical I mean trail where you have a good solid walking tread and includes a variety of flat and hilly conditions. In this case my speed is 3.75 km per hour
In the case of the Bibbulmun Track, I decided to average 32 km (20 miles) per day and felt I could do this comfortable. This was also the figure that hikers in the US-based long distance hiking fraternity identify as a reasonable figure. Purely arbitrary, but a good starting point.
Naismith's Rule
The previous section was based around extensive research of my hiking and is based around what I know I can do. But where do you start if you don’t have the time to spend 18 months working this out? In researching this article I came across Naismith’s Rule which I hadn’t heard of before. This rule provides an indication base on an estimate of fitness level, distance, and elevation change. It’s not going to be as accurate as researching yourself but it’s a great starting point.
Naismith’s Rule was developed in 1892 by Scottish mountaineer, William Naismith and helps with the planning of a walking or hiking trip by calculating how long it will take to travel the intended route, including any extra time taken when walking uphill. Over the years that method has been refined to improve on the accuracy. The maths starts getting heavy once you add all the improvements but if you go to the reference section below there is a quick and dirty calculator that takes all the math out of it.
One comment I would make here is that in my case high temperature and high humidity greatly impacts my walking speed. My preferred maximum walking temperature sits at around 12° to 18° (Celcius). Colder is also fine, but once it starts getting into the mid 20’s I start slowing down. If it’s going to be a hot day, I will start hiking earlier in the morning, will take more breaks, and hike longer into the evening. On longer hikes I will identify a full moon early in the evening or hike early in the morning to extend my days.
Naismith Rule Chart (image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naismith%27s_rule)
Unless you into maths use the link in the reference section below to go to the online calculator
Factors to Consider
To get the most accurate figures for your walking pace you need to keep records of your own adventures. How detailed you go is really going to be up to you.
Key factors
- Log your start and finish time
- Distance travelled
- Identify the main terrain eg flat ground hills, mountains, soft/hard sand etc
Additional Factors
- The weight you carry on your back (total pack weight)
- Footwear used
- Temperature/Humidity
You don’t have to be obsessive about it but even using the key factors will be a good starting point and plugging those figures into one of the online calculators makes for a good starting point.
Healthy Implications of Walking Speed
Initially my focus for this article was based on walking speed and hiking but in doing the research I came across the use of walking speed in a US based paper titled White Paper: Walking Speed: the Sixth Vital Sign that identifies walking speed as a key indicator for health as we age and its impact.
The key take away from this paper is “Walking speed is ‘almost the perfect measure.’ A reliable, valid, sensitive and specific measure, self-selected walking speed (WS), also termed gait velocity, correlates with functional ability, and balance confidence. It has the potential to predict future health status, and functional decline including hospitalization, discharge location, and mortality. Walking speed reflects both functional and physiological changes, is a discriminating factor in determining potential for rehabilitation, and aids in prediction of falls and fear of falling.” (See link to this paper in the reference section below)
“This review summarizes the strong psychometric properties of walking speed and robust evidence for using this clinical measurement. Walking speed is easily measurable, clinically interpretable, and a potentially modifiable risk factor. For these reasons, using walking speed as the sixth vital sign is both pragmatic and essential”.
The walking speed test isn’t about hiking but rather about our health as we age and is typically done with a 10 metre walk test. Walking speed highlights how strong our muscles are, how good our balance is, our circulation, and our cognitive ability, among other indicators.
Final thoughts
You should be able to tell from this article that I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to information and most people won’t go to the length I do to work out walking speeds. Having a basic set of figures will not only help you plan your hikes but will also remove stress on-trail because you will have a good indication of how long you need to achieve your daily goals. There is nothing worse than thinking you will only be hiking for say five hours and then end up walking three hours past that time and you’re still not at camp. It can and does happen but it shouldn’t be a daily occurrence. Having said that don’t expect to arrive on the exact time that you planned but instead work on an approximate window for you times.
So if you don’t at least have a basic understanding of how fast you walk, then maybe it is time that you should!
One last comment here is that just because you can walk at a much higher pace doesn’t mean that you should. Set your walking speed at a comfortable pace you know you can achieve without feeling like you are pushing too hard. If for whatever reason you are walking faster I would suggest walking less hours, not more. Pushing both your walking speed and your walking duration runs the risk of injury.
References
- Naismith’s Rule
- Naismiths Rule calculator
- White Paper: “Walking Speed: the Sixth Vital Sign”
- The multifaceted benefits of walking for healthy aging: from Blue Zones to molecular mechanisms