Wow, walking is hard! (running vs. walking)

yirara

No, I'm not joking. Inspired by the discussions on how much calories walking burns vs running I didn't run tonight but went for a 5km walk. I'm not the fastest runner. On average I run about 8_00-8:30 minutes/km. Thus I set my walking goal at 8:30 minutes/km. Phew! That was much harder than running. But not only that, my speed varied a bit more. My runs usually have a pace variation of about 9%, with this walk I had a variation of 12%. I noticed I continuously got slower again and had to work hard to keep up the speed. Ok, I guess the calorie burn was still lower than running, but it certainly was more exhausting.

mwyvr

There's a cross-over point where fast walking is less efficient than running. I guess you found yours!

At that point, your calorie burn for walking may be the same, or even a little higher, than your running.

yirara

Yes, that shows in the METs table if you compare the same speed for walking and running. That's what I was arguing before as well. But of course feeling more exhausted is no proof that I actually burned more calories. Anyway, it was good fun.

LAT1963

Do you find you can achieve your target heart rates walking?

Right now I can get "in the zone" by walking, especially on hills. But when I was fit I had to run to reach my heart rate zone. Just wondered whether others have the same experience.

What is a METs table? Do you have a link you could share? The fact there's a crossover point suggests that a complete program should include both running and walking, maybe.

1princesswarrior

Unless I'm doing hills I can only get into the 65% working level when walking but I tend to overwork my legs when I run and aggravate old injuries. And that's getting drug around by three herding dogs to add resistance.

MtnGirl38

You were walking the same speed you jog? Seems like that would require a lot more effort....I'd be exhausted too!

I've found when I do hill workouts on the treadmill (walking pace 4.0-4.2 mi/hr) it sometimes still "feels" easier to jog it, even uphill. Slower than my normal jogging pace, but seems to require less effort than walking it. This is interesting. Thanks for your post!

MeanderingMammal

LAT1963 wrote: »

What is a METs table? Do you have a link you could share? The fact there's a crossover point suggests that a complete program should include both running and walking, maybe.

Metabolic equivalents are a work factor that's applied to body mass and time/ distance. They're derived from research done at Stanford and essentially allow you to compare the workload effectiveness of any activities.

http://www.juststand.org/portals/3/literature/compendium-of-physical-activities.pdf is from 2000, which was the first update. Subsequently republished in 2011.

yirara

I'm online with my phone now and cannot give you the link. There's a google docs document that still gets updated with new measurements. I'll try to think of it tomorrow evening when I'm online again (it's evening now)

yirara

One thing I found is that while I'm not jumping like during a run the leg movement seems more difficult (especially if you're not that tall) and my upper body moves much more in order to keep up with the pace. Hmm I should look up fast walkers techniques!

Mr_Knight

yirara wrote: »

Thus I set my walking goal at 8:30 minutes/km.

That's under 4.5 mph, which gives a MET value of ~6.

Running at that speed has a MET of ~7. So... (7-1)/(6-1) -> 1.2 -> running very slowly burns 20% more than walking extremely fast.

All numbers approximate.

But even modestly increasing your running pace from 8:30 to 8:00 - which is still slow running - increases the difference to about 40%.

Bottom line - you're burning a lot more calories/mile running at 8:00/km vs walking at 8:30/km.

angelexperiment

But you are working different muscles walking than running. ..