Walking harder than running?

AnneTanne

Barefooters
Feb 27, 2012
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Balen, Belgium
annetanne.be
So... after a few months of relative inactivity I started running again, and exclusively barefoot.
During the first ten days I did nothing more that short distances, starting with about 100 m, resting a day, 200 m the following day and so on...
This week I started with a scheme comparable to C25K.

Until today, I always ran on the smooth concrete of the road heading east from my house, but today I took the other direction, which means a couple of hundreds of yards of rough asphalt (pebbles 1-2 inches across) and then the chip-seal with fine gravel of a tow-path along a canal.

I was out for about 25 minutes, 9 of them running.

But what I noticed and thought was weird, was that it was easier to run on those rougher surfaces than to walk...
(And the last 100 yards... back on the concrete... it felt like I was walking on velvet...)
 
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Yep....sounds about right :)
gives a new meaning to "born to run"
otherwise it could have been called "born to walk" I guess :barefoot:
 
That's right! walking is harder than running.
 
Totally agree.
 
I hate walking.
 
Yup, absolutely, but I've recently gotten much better at walking barefoot, and it's not as difficult as it first feels. But just as running barefoot can't be accomplished if you heel strike,the same is true for walking. You have to move forward over your stride and land very, very lightly on your heels. Almost a mid-foot strike, and very, very relaxed.
 
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It seems to me that walking can be harder, particularly on a rough surface and if one's soles are already a bit sore. I blogged today about a 70 walk I did a few years ago, The Walk With the Ancients, http://ahcuah.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/a-walk-with-the-ancients/ . By about the fourth day, I was getting a bit footsore, and we were walking on a chip-and-tar road. I was lagging behind. So I started running (not fast, but with pretty good form) to catch up. It was amazing that my feet felt fine doing so.