how long to walk?

Just found this:

http://walking.about.com/b/2007/03/19/how-far-can-a-healthy-person-walk.htm

I seem to recall a normal adult walking speed on level ground is around three miles an hour if they're reasonably healthy, so - using that as your basis you can play around with it as much as you like.

How long can X keep that up? Depends who X is, where he is, how fit.......

There are so many variables it's almost impossible to answer your question unless you can be more specific about the terrain and the people and their degreee of fitness and health and the weather and why they want to get from A to B -adrenalin?...fear?...panic?...who is with them..

Question really belongs in the Story Research Forum.

I read on several different sites that 20-36 miles a day on foot is completely doable for the average healthy human adult.

Little Anonymous Me said:

I read on several different sites that 20-36 miles a day on foot is completely doable for the average healthy human adult.

Click to expand...

This. The average person walks more than they realize. Walking around the house, to the car, from the car, around the workplace, if they don't have a job that requires them to sit for long periods... A cheap pedometer is quite the eye-opener.

Of course, there's a difference between those cumulative chunks of walking, and 20-36 miles at a stretch. That's why marathons require training. 3 MPH is a good base for walking. Kids, obviously, can't keep it up as long as adults, and would either require everyone to pause a while, or for someone else to carry them, which would in turn tire out that person faster than carrying just their own weight.

Terrain... There's a ton of variable there. Flat, even ground? No biggie. Sand/snow? You get a workout from plunging your feet in and out of the stuff. Inclines? It's like stairs. A lot of stairs.

Personally, I learn these sorts of things best by personal experience rather than source research. My advice? Go walking. Find out how far an hour takes you. See how much energy it takes you to explore different terrain. Then use that as a base for your story.

As far as your initial concern, unless specific, to-the-minute timing is crucial to your story, you should be able to be a bit more general with your information. Your readership probably won't even notice if you leave out the finer details of the walk.

The 12 - 15 minute mile is the normal range but that considers the walker is fit and used to vigorous walking. If the person is not accustomed to aggressive walking, they may start out good but fade as the walk goes on.
Kids? Are you carrying a kid or holding his hand? It makes a big difference. If you are carrying a child, it will slow you down like lugging a backpack full of weights. If you are holding the child's hand, you can only walk as far as the child is capable of walking and, depending on the age, that may be no more than a mile an hour.

Remember, a lot of this also depends on factors such as shoes, weak points in anatomy such as knees or ankles, and unexpected injuries such as pulling a muscle, rolling your foot, etc.

20-30 miles a day is doable for an active, healthy adult. For a kid, quite a bit less, and also minus the amount past the point where they're going to just get tired of walking and start complaining too much to continue at any reasonable speed.

But if you're doing that for multiple days, it's going to get tough. Your distances are going to go down drastically after the first or second day, especially if you've not been actively training for such a thing. If you do 25 miles the first day, and you're not really used to doing that every day, then day two is going to be full of stops and sore knees and only about 15 miles. Days three and four are going to be rough, and depending on how badly you beat yourself up the previous days, could mean a complete day off is necessary.

If you're talking about a forced march, pilgrimage, or other such journey, a few miles a day is probably more realistic. Forced marches will get you a lot more distance, but they'll also kill your characters off a lot quicker. A fraction of those who start out a forced march of any real length are going to make it to the end.

If you've got kids in the mix, you're probably going to be able to do a few miles a day maximum, and with some serious stops along the way every day. The more you push them, the more they'll push back, quit, collapse, etc.

Little Anonymous Me said:

I read on several different sites that 20-36 miles a day on foot is completely doable for the average healthy human adult.

Click to expand...

Ha.

Maybe for the average fit human adult who regularly walks long distances.

Otherwise, not likely.

TheWordsmith said:

The 12 - 15 minute mile is the normal range but that considers the walker is fit and used to vigorous walking. If the person is not accustomed to aggressive walking, they may start out good but fade as the walk goes on.

Click to expand...

3 mph is a 20-minute mile and that's a fairly forward pace (not strolling but walking with some briskness). A 12-15 minute mile would be 4 mph or faster, almost jogging.

If you look at the average walking speed of most adults who aren't exercising but just walking, it's closer to 2.0-2.5 mph.

scarecrow said:

how many miles a day a healthy active person can walk with different variables?

Click to expand...

BethS said:

Ha.

Maybe for the average fit human adult who regularly walks long distances.

Otherwise, not likely.

Click to expand...

It seems we are talking about a fit individual. Yay.

Just remember, after the person gets blisters on their feet from walking that first 20 miles, that 20 miles a day average is going to be shot all to hell.

As a point of reference: the Roman army expected 20 miles (on a Roman road) = 1 day's standard march.

When I used to backpack, we planned on 10 miles per day. That's with rest breaks, meals, time to make/break camp and walking woodland trails in mountains. It was never a hard hike, even for kids as young as 10, and we had time to fish or whatever.

With that in mind, your pace is doable. But does it really matter? Is it critical that the distance be accurate? Can't the destination be "two days walk" to get there, instead of "39.6 miles?"

Jeff

Perhaps a left field reference but in the American Civil War an infantry unit (foot soldiers) was considered to be pushing it if they went over twenty miles in a day.

How important is the mileage? Most likely, you don't have to mention exactly how many miles they walked unless there are highway signs telling them.

This doesn't help with pacing how much walking per session (covered well by others above), but google maps' walking directions can be useful to give yourself perspective for how long in total one foot after the next walking time it would take to get between two real world points you are familiar with.

Also remember the "walk the coastline" problem. Depending on the terrain and the bends, the real path between two points on a map can be vastly greater than the straight line distance between the two. The upshot of this is that you have a lot of latitude if you aren't traveling between two known places to stretch or condense the amount of time it would take to walk.

3mph is the speed Google Maps uses for its estimates for length of time a journey will take when it does its calculation for walking directions. I agree with Mr Breadcrumb, Google Maps can be quite useful for this kind of research anyway. Of course you'll want to make adjustments for things that will slow a character down, but it can be a good place to start to get an estimate to then tweak, so you don't go wildly wrong.

Don't forget that even a practiced walker will be stiff, tired and perhaps even blistery the following day. I'm not excessively fit, but I can walk for miiiiiles. But the following day my hips and thighs ache. Without rest that ache gets deeper, making me slower. The longer you have them walking without a rest day, the slower they'll get.

Back in junior high, I walked a number of walk-a-thons, 19-, 20-, 21-, 23-, and 27-miles plus a 40-mile bike-a-thon. One of them was all on sand. It's totally doable and didn't take more than a day or two to recover. But back then, we played outside, didn't have video games or computers and thought nothing of taking long walks with friends to get where we wanted to go. Wish I were still in such good shape

Marathons go for 26 miles and that is running. During track season my son regularly runs up to 10 miles a day. Walking is really just a matter of time. You won't cover as much territory, but if you're a quick walker, you would be astonished how much you can cover in an hour.

Little Anonymous Me said:

It seems we are talking about a fit individual. Yay.

Click to expand...

OK, but keep in mind that even for a fit person, a 20 mile walk will take seven to ten hours, because nobody keeps up a 3 mph pace for that long, and breaks will also be necessary.

BethS said:

OK, but keep in mind that even for a fit person, a 20 mile walk will take seven to ten hours, because nobody keeps up a 3 mph pace for that long, and breaks will also be necessary.

Click to expand...

I was assuming ten. Sorry, I did not make that clear. I'm writing EF with military characters, so I've really gotten into a marching mindset--all my statistics and knowledge is based off old army movements and campaigns.