Walking Strategy for Ultramarathons

A useful walking plan tells you when to change gait, how to restart, and what the combined pace means for the next cutoff. Start with a cue you can remember while tired, then test it on terrain like your race. The calculations below show how to turn that trial into a pace budget.

Walking Is Strategy

In a 24-hour race, a backyard ultra or a mountain 100, walking can be part of the plan from the start. A timed race rewards total distance over the whole clock; a trail race also requires enough progress to reach each cutoff.

Planned walking may help some runners control effort or handle terrain, and it can create a lower-attention window for practiced fueling. Those possible benefits depend on pace, environment, technique, and the rest of the plan; walking does not remove heat, injury, or medical risk.

When to Walk

• When a climb or surface pushes effort beyond the range you practiced.
• At a tested time or course cue if planned breaks keep effort smoother.
• Where race rules, congestion, footing, or visibility make running less safe.
• When a practiced walk makes eating or equipment checks easier.
• Whenever slowing is needed while arranging help for a non-urgent problem.

For confusion, collapse, chest pain or loss of coordination, stop and get race-medical help. Use the medical warning-sign checklist to distinguish a pacing adjustment from a reason to stop.

Choosing Walking Cues

Ratios are tools, not laws. Use them to prevent pace surges and to make tasks predictable only after testing them. Observational studies describe walking during ultramarathons; they do not validate one ideal ratio for all runners.

How to Walk Fast

Walking speed is worth putting numbers on, because one kilometre per hour is a large amount of ground over a day. The conversions below are arithmetic: minutes per kilometre is 60 divided by the speed in km/h, and minutes per mile is that figure multiplied by 1.609344. The final column assumes the speed is held for a full 24 hours with no stops. It compares speeds; it does not predict what you can sustain through fatigue.

Cadence

In a treadmill study of 76 adults aged 21–40, Tudor-Locke et al. (2019) proposed 100 and 130 steps per minute as approximate thresholds for moderate and vigorous intensity. Those are population-level intensity estimates, not target cadences for a fatigued ultrarunner. Terrain, individual movement and how hard the walk feels still matter.

Cadence and speed together determine average step length. At 6 km/h you cover 100 metres per minute, so 100 steps per minute is a 1.00 m step and 120 steps per minute is a 0.83 m step. At 7 km/h you cover 116.7 metres per minute, so 120 steps per minute is a 0.97 m step. Use these relationships to understand your own measurements, rather than forcing a stride length or cadence that feels awkward.

Gradient

Minetti et al. (2002) measured the energy cost of walking and running on 10 runners on treadmill slopes from −45% to +45%. These two reported points compare energy per metre; they do not establish a universal gradient at which an ultrarunner should switch gait.

At +45%, running cost about 9% more energy per metre than walking: (18.93 ÷ 17.33 − 1) × 100 ≈ 9.2%. The level walking value is its measured minimum cost at about 3.6 km/h, not the cost of the 6 km/h walk used in our examples below. Neither comparison measures which strategy produces your best race result.

Technique still varies with anatomy and terrain, so experiment with posture and arm use at an easy effort, and use poles or a hands-on-thighs position on climbs only if race rules allow it and you have practiced it.

Worked Walking Examples

These are illustrative calculations from stated speeds, not predictions. They use the two run/walk patterns described in the 24-hour pacing strategy: a short 4:1 block and a longer 20-minute block. Both assume 10 km/h running and 6 km/h walking, and both assume the runner is stopped for a total of 2 hours across the 24, leaving 22 hours moving.

The first row works out as 4 minutes at 10 km/h = 0.667 km plus 1 minute at 6 km/h = 0.100 km, giving 0.767 km every 5 minutes, or 9.2 km/h. The 22-hour totals use the unrounded moving speeds. The difference is 9.6 km over 22 moving hours. At 9.2 km/h, an extra 30-minute stop costs 4.6 km of that hypothetical distance. Budget the stops explicitly; changing the ratio alone cannot compensate for every delay.

Allow for Slowing Later

Keeping an early speed for 22 hours is a strong assumption. A second scenario might allow six moving hours at 9.2 km/h, eight at 7 km/h and eight at 5 km/h, plus two stopped hours. That totals 55.2 + 56 + 40 = 151.2 km, compared with 202.4 km at a constant 9.2 km/h. These invented speeds illustrate sensitivity to slowing; they are not a forecast or prescribed pacing schedule.

Enter your measured paces in the run-walk calculator, then use the pace calculator to compare stopped-time scenarios. For a course with cutoffs, check each remaining section rather than relying only on the whole-race average.

What Walking Alone Gets You

The walking-only row is the one most runners underestimate. A runner who walks at 6 km/h and is stopped for 2 hours covers 132 km, or 82 miles. Dropping to 5 km/h gives 22 x 5 = 110 km (68.4 mi); lifting it to 7 km/h gives 154 km (95.7 mi). For scale, the median of all 52 published results at the September 2025 Self-Transcendence London 24-hour was 164.4 km, and the middle 50% of that field fell between 136.7 km and 183.2 km, as calculated in this site’s statistics report. Those results do not record who walked throughout. The comparison puts the arithmetic in context; it does not establish that a particular walking speed is sustainable or sufficient for your event.

Use comfort, control, and sustainable effort as feedback; sharp pain or worsening gait is a reason to reassess, not a technique problem to hide.

Train the Walk

If walking is part of the race plan, introduce it progressively within the training load you already tolerate. A qualified coach can help set duration and frequency when injury history or current symptoms matter.

1. Choose one repeatable section. Use a familiar loop or climb within an existing easy session, with the footwear and pack you expect to use.
2. Test one cue. For example, walk at a landmark or use a short run-walk cycle. Return to easy running without accelerating to recover the “lost” time.
3. Record elapsed time as well as moving time. Note run pace, walk pace, stops, perceived effort and any discomfort. GPS moving averages can hide aid-station time.
4. Review the later part of the session and recovery. An attractive average in the first few cycles is not enough if effort or soreness rises sharply.
5. Repeat before changing the plan. Compare another cue on a similar session, then rehearse food or equipment tasks during a walk once the pattern is comfortable.

Save a short note for race day: “Cue: ___; tested run/walk paces: ___; next cutoff and margin: ___; review at: ___.” Decide in advance when you will review the plan, such as at an aid station or after a change in conditions, rather than continually chasing the original average.

Common Mistakes

• Copying another runner's ratio without testing it.
• Accelerating abruptly after each walk to "make up time."
• Ignoring cutoffs, terrain, weather, or a changing medical condition.
• Treating walking as a way to continue through an emergency warning sign.
• Using a race-day gait, footwear, or poles that were not practiced.

For timed events, combine this with the 24-hour pacing strategy.