The Sport Walk Speed Test
Our Speed Test comes in two parts – a ‘top speed’ test and then a three kilometre test. The ‘top speed’ test is, as the name suggests, all about recording your fastest possible walking speed, whereas the three kilometre test (3K Test) is about gradually honing your pace over that distance to reveal your optimum speed. The 3K Test is conducted over three walks on three days.
Test 1 – The ‘Top Speed’ Test
Find a piece of ground that’s completely flat and level, preferably a tarmac or hard surface but definitely not gravel or any other surface that is loose or could be slippery. You could use a quiet car park out of hours or perhaps a pedestrianised road through a park. You can walk on grass but make sure that it’s completely level with no potholes and you would need to conduct tests on grass when it’s completely dry and hard.
Once you’ve found your location, measure out about 50 metres and create a start and finish line, using sticks or some other clear demarkation.
You should be wearing light sporty clothing, ideally shorts to give your legs the most freedom and you should be wearing your normal training shoes for tarmac or trail shoes for grass. You should note that the best shoe for this test is one that isn’t too flexible so that you can get really good projection from each step.
You’ll need to time and record each effort, so the minimum you’ll need is the ability to time your effort with a stopwatch on your mobile or a traditional stopwatch operated by someone helping you.
The best approach is to use a sports watch that can record your speed and pace or to use an app on your phone like Strava, that can record activities with this data, to save you having to be precise with your course measurements and work our your speed manually.
If you do need to use a stopwatch and then manually calculate your pace and speed, you must measure out exactly 50 metres, otherwise your calculations will not be anywhere near accurate.
With a sports watch or with the Strava app recording your efforts, you’ll get exact speed and pace data regardless of how long your course is, so you wont need to mark out exactly 50 metres on the ground, you can just be approximate.
Warm Up
Before you start, walk for about ten to fifteen minutes at a brisk but steady pace to warm up. You mustn’t go straight into the Speed Test without warming up as this could give you an injury.
Method
When you’re warmed up and are ready to go at the start line, start your watch or phone app or stopwatch and get walking as fast as you can. Really push yourself to go at your ultimate top speed and hold this for the full duration of the course.
If you’re using a stopwatch method to record your time and then calculate your speed and pace afterwards, you’ll need to give yourself a run up (or walk up) to the start line, so that when you cross the start line and start your watch, you’re already walking at your top speed.
When you get to the finish line, stop your watch or the app and save this effort as a single individual activity. If you’re using the manual stopwatch method, record your time.
Take a break for ten minutes to fully get your breath back and recover and then go again. Repeat exactly what you did on the first effort and then record or save that effort.
After another ten minute break, do one last effort and record it, so that you have three individual activities – one for each effort.
The purpose of doing three efforts is simply to ensure that you get the best results and outcome from the test. You may think that your first effort will be your fastest but that’s not necessarily going to be the case. You might find the second effort is better because you’re now more relaxed with the process, it might be that the third effort is best because you’re getting stronger each time.
In reality, everyone will get a different outcome but conducting three efforts, spaced out by ten minutes ensures that you get the very best results you can. One of the three will be your best, it all depends which one!
Once you’ve completed the Top Speed Test, write down your three top speeds and the average speed reading for each effort. If you’ve used a sports watch or app, getting the top speed will be simply about scanning through the speed readings to find the peak. Your watch or app should give you your average speed for the effort within the headline stats.
If you’ve used a stopwatch function to time yourself over exactly 50 metres, then you’ll need to calculate what your speed and pace is from the times you set.
To calculate your speed, simply divide the distance by the time you recorded, whereas to calculate your pace, divide the time by the distance.
You now have your absolute top speed, which will be , obviously, the fastest of your three effort speeds. Your absolute top speed from these test efforts is the peak number you hit but it’s the highest average speed number that’s the real measure of your current ability because it’s the top speed you achieved, on average, over 50 metres, not simply a spike in your effort for just a second or two.
This is still not a number to work with or to aim to repeat though in your day to day training sessions, it’s purely a trophy time. Trophy times may sound like useless measures – if it’s not something you’re aiming to beat, what value does it have?
But Trophy times are a motivational tool. It’s your personal best or PB for your top speed and you can use that to motivate you. If you know you can walk that fast, then you can aspire to walk faster generally. Your top speed PROVES that you’re capable, it’s just that you can only hold that speed for fifty metres. BUT YOU CAN STILL WALK THAT FAST!
Test 2 – The ‘3K Test‘
The next phase of the Sport Walk Speed Test is the 3K Test. For more experienced walkers we’d recommend doing this over 5km, so if you have already progressed to walking that distance comfortably in your training then you can increase your test distance to 5km.
For this test, you will go walking 3km on three days to establish what your current target pace should be. This is to test you over a more realistic distance for day to day training than the top speed test.
Plot a 3km route. Again, if you’re using a stopwatch method to record your efforts, the route will need to be exactly 3km or 5km long, not just approximate, otherwise your calculations will be inaccurate.
On the first day, walk at a fast pace that you know you can maintain for the whole duration. Work hard but don’t push yourself beyond what you know you can sustain. Record your time, pace and speed.
For the second 3k Test walk, push yourself to go harder and faster but keep to a pace that you think you should be able to sustain for the full duration, even if you don’t know for certain that you can. This is about increasing your pace in a controlled way, so although you should be going into the unknown, you think you should be able to maintain it. Record your time, pace and speed.
The last 3kTest walk is where you really go for it! Don’t walk as fast as you did for your top speed test but go out hard and fast. Your effort should feel like you might not be able to sustain it for the full 3km but just keep going. If you need to stop, then pause your sports watch or app (don’t stop the session) and then restart it when you start walking again. Do the same with a stopwatch timer – pause and restart.
If you do need to stop, don’t wait until you’re completely recovered, just pause until your heart rate drops and you feel more in control, then start again. What this test is designed to do is to push you to your limit, not in terms of top speed but in terms of your aerobic ability and your stamina.
If you do stop, each time you restart, don’t walk slower to make it more likely that you’ll complete the route before needing to stop again – go at it as hard as when you started and if you need to stop again, just repeat the process to let your heart rate drop before carrying on.
Data Processing
Once you’ve completed these three 3k Tests, you’ll have three sets of results, just as with the Top Speed Test. The point of doing three tests this time, rather than jumping straight in to the fastest one, is to give the broadest picture of what your current capability is, rather than seeing if you go faster each time, as was the case with the Top Speed Test.
If you’ve used a stopwatch to time your walks, to establish your pace, simply divide your time by the distance.
Your first test result is what you’re comfortably capable of now. Your second result shows what you should be able to do and so if you’re currently walking closer to your first test pace, then you really need to be increasing your pace to match the second test.
Your third test, especially if you needed to stop, shows what you could achieve because although it’s a faster pace than you can handle at the moment, the fact that you were able to hold that pace for a decent distance proves it’s within your capability, you just need to focus on working to improve your speed, so you can handle this pace more comfortably and for longer.
So, what we do next is to find the pace that’s mid-way between your second and third test scores and then you should adopt that pace as your target training pace to work to on all your workout walks, until you repeat the Speed Test in another three months and, potentially, refine your target pace again (hopefully to go faster still).
So, if your second test score was a pace of 10 minutes per kilometre and your third test score came out at 8 minutes per kilometre (even though you needed to stop), you should fix your target pace to train to from now on at 9 minutes per kilometre.
This process of establishing what your actual capability is and then working out what a target pace should be – one that pushes you beyond what you do now but is still achievable – will help you to progress, to get faster, to get stronger and, most importantly, to get fitter!