Hey, team. Coach Alexa here.
Coming back on track with my series of videos about walking. I know how much some runners love a good stat in terms of a time. Often people send me enquiry forms saying, “I want to do a marathon in such and such a time”, or a half marathon, 10K or 5K in such and such a time.
So I thought I’d use this video to highlight some of the awesome times that have been achieved by walking.
Race Walking World Records
Let’s look at race walking first of all. Events that used to be part of the Olympics, the 50K race walk.
Not much of a spectator event, probably, compared to a lot of the other track and field events. But the world record time from the last time it was at the Olympics for the men’s 50K was 3 hours, 32 minutes and 33 seconds.
Now, that’s a 50K.
I don’t know about you, but I know the vast majority of runners would be really, really pleased with that as their marathon time running, let alone 50K walking. So it is impressive stuff.
The women’s 20K race walk world record is 1 hour, 23 minutes and 49 seconds. Again, I know that’s slightly shorter than a half marathon distance, about 1.1 kilometres shorter than a half marathon distance, but still really, really impressive.
So, to put it in context about how quickly you can go, admittedly, the race walking gait is quite an interesting one. I don’t think you’d walk the dog in that sort of gait pattern, but it still is technically walking. You’ve got at least one foot on the ground at all times. You get disqualified if you ever have the both feet off the ground moment, which is what defines running.
The men’s 100-mile racewalking world record is 16 hours, 31 minutes, and 38 seconds, set by Jan De Jonge of the Netherlands in 1982. *Note the world record time Coach Alexa mentions in this video of 10 hours 51 minutes 39 seconds was for running, not walking, and was achieved by Aleksandr Sorokin on 7 January 2022 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Again, pretty flipping impressive for walking.
So, just to say that you can cover the ground really, really well at a walk.
My Experience With Long Distance Walking Events
I used to sign up for quite a lot of Long Distance Walkers Association events, particularly when I used to live in Surrey. There’s a very, very active local group in Surrey that puts on a lot of challenge events, and quite a lot of them are longer distance.
There’s two or three 50-mile walking events a year, which runners can turn up to.
I used to sign up to them when I was in my twenties because I was skint, basically. They’re very cheap compared to running ultras. If you sign up to them as a runner, they just set you off an hour earlier, and you get proper full meals at the aid stations. None of this electrolyte-only rubbish.
Anyway, side point.
I was humbled, to be honest, when I turned up to my first 50-mile walking event as a runner in my twenties, thinking, “Oh, this will be a walk in the park.” All these old people hanging around at the start. Old people, in my mind, probably in their forties, fifties and upwards, with some much older people too.
I was blown away by the pace at which these were not professional people, they were just local people who were very good at walking, very well practised at it, and very good at navigation, because to be cheap it was a self-navigation event.
They were easily beating my time at a walk at that stage, for some of them, and it really showed me just how fast good walkers are able to walk for some seriously long distances.
A Little Walking History
As a side note, there’s some interesting history. I think I’m correct in telling all the details of this story. I might not have got it all quite right.
The Long Distance Walkers Association, I believe, was the first organisation to set up a 100-mile event in the UK.
I seem to remember a story from one of the gentlemen who set up Centurion Running, an ultra company, that they’d have to go to the Long Distance Walkers Association event in order to do a 100-mile event and get a recorded time, because at the time there were no other, or at least not many other, 100-mile events. This is going back a decade or two.
So those long-distance walking events were trailblazing for some of the real choice we now have in the UK of long-distance ultra-running events.
Walking Land’s End to John O’Groats
A final one to say is that for something like Land’s End to John O’Groats, you can cycle it, you can run it, but you can also walk it. You can walk it in around 61 days at 20 miles a day.
I don’t know about you, but my body these days finds walking 20 miles a day, slightly counterintuitively because it does take me a bit longer, easier from a recovery point of view and easier on my slightly odd-shaped hip joint, which has had multiple surgeries, not due to running, I hasten to add, than running 20 miles a day ever was.
Walking Is Faster Than Most People Think
It’s an interesting one, isn’t it?
We have this thing that walking’s slow, walking’s boring, but actually, when you look at some of the distances and some of the times, it’s a bit of a different kettle of fish.
I know I’ve focused a little bit on times in this video. Normally I shy away from defining our achievement just in terms of the number on the stopwatch, but I just wanted, for those people who are a bit more time outcome-focused as runners, to give a little bit of context about how quick walking can be, particularly when you’re at the sharp end of race walking.
Happy running and walking.
