First Time 5K-er

If you can speed walk (whatever that means to you) 3.1 miles, then you're good! I'm a slow runner, and I've done a number of them, always finishing at the end of the pack. One of them was a cancer fundraiser, and my wife was 1 year post-treatment, so she did it too at her own pace, which at that time was about 20mm or something. She had plenty of company. Survivors all got a special ribbon!

The walk itself isn't probably worth a journey, so the overall event would need to be the draw. Hope it all works out!

There's dozens of "couch-to-5k" (C25K) training plans and apps out there, if you aren't already in the habit of walking that long. Even if you are planning to just walk and not run at all, walking is an endurance sport, so if you're starting on the couch and try to go walk 3 miles right now, you're going to have a bad time.

Most C25K plans are three days a week, with timed intervals of walking and running. You start with lots of short intervals, alternating walking and running for 60/30 seconds or something like that. Eventually the running intervals get longer, and the walking ones get shorter, fewer, and further between, until you're ultimately just running for 30 minutes at a stretch without any walking breaks. From there, once you can run for that amount of time, you can work on increasing your speed to actually travel 5 kilometers in 30 minutes (which is an average 5k time). There are some C25K plans that shift focus from time to distance partway through, like you spend the first six weeks building up to running for 20 minutes no matter how far you get, and then start working on running for one km no matter how long it takes. You can walk slightly faster for the "running" intervals, or just stand/shuffle in place for the "walking" intervals.

edit to add: back in college I did C25K and participated in one of those gimmicky "color run" 5k races, where they throw water and cornstarch with food coloring in it at you while you run. It was a lot of fun but very, very gimmicky. My time was 35:35, nothing to write home about, LMAO. I ended up walking quickly for most of it.

Do it! I've done a number of 5Ks and an 8K and 10K. I love them and just challenge myself to do better each time. I typically go alone as well, but that hasn't stopped me yet. I'm doing a 10K in about a month and a 10 miler in November. Working my way up to do a half marathon in 2022. I am a walker with slow jog intervals.