Can You Walk an Ultramarathon?¶
Yes. Almost everyone walks in an ultra, and the longer the race, the more of it is walking. What decides whether walking is enough is the time limit. A 100 miler with a 34 hour limit asks for about 20 minutes a mile on average, aid stations included.
That number is the whole question. Twenty minutes a mile is a pace most people can hold on foot. This post puts the real time limits next to it, so you can see how much room walking leaves you at a 50K, a 100K, a 100 miler, or a race you have not signed up for yet.
Do ultra runners walk?¶
They do, at every distance and every finishing time. Relentless Forward Commotion, a long-running ultra training site, calls walking in an ultra "a necessity" and writes that for everyone outside the elite, crossing a hundred-mile finish line "often includes a good bit of walking."
Two reasons it happens, and they stack.
The climbs. Runners who have finished a lot of these walk the steep parts on purpose, from the first mile, so the legs still work late in the day. Power hiking for ultras covers the technique.
The hours. After enough of them, running stops being on offer. Walking is what you have left, and to the clock a walked mile counts the same as a run one.
So the useful question is not whether you will walk. It is how fast you have to walk to finish inside the limit.
How fast do you have to walk to make an ultra cutoff?¶
Take the time limit and divide by the distance. That is the average pace the race asks for, with every minute counted: stops, shoes, soup, the sit-down at mile 70.
NavRun's race catalog gives two medians. Of the 61 hundred-mile courses with a published time limit, the median limit is 34 hours. Of 32 50K courses, the median is 11 hours. (The catalog was queried on 2026-10-02. A median means half the courses give you less time than this, half give you more.)
| Race | Time limit | Average pace asked, stops included |
|---|---|---|
| 50K (31.07 miles) | 11 hours (median) | about 21 minutes a mile |
| 100 miles | 34 hours (median) | about 20 minutes a mile |
| 100 miles, Western States | 30 hours | 18 minutes a mile |
The pace column is arithmetic, not a catalog figure. The 100 miler: 34 hours is 2,040 minutes, over 100 miles, is 20.4 minutes a mile. The 50K: 660 minutes over 31.07 miles is 21.2.
For scale, Medical News Today puts the average walking speed of healthy adults at about 3 miles an hour. That is 20 minutes a mile. It also puts a brisk walk near 3.5 miles an hour on a treadmill, which is about 17 minutes a mile.
Put those side by side and the picture is plain:
- A steady 3 miles an hour, with no stops and no slowing, lands right at the median 100 miler limit and a little ahead of the median 50K limit.
- A steady 3.5 miles an hour for 100 miles takes about 28.6 hours. Add an hour of aid stations and you are at 29.6, with 4.4 hours to spare against a 34 hour limit.
- Stops come out of the same clock. One hour in total at aid stations on a 50K with an 11 hour limit leaves 10 hours of moving, which is about 19 minutes a mile.
The part to plan around is the second half of the race. Nobody walks mile 80 at the speed they walked mile 10. That is why a pace that looks easy on a calculator needs room built in at the start: run what runs, walk the rest briskly, and bank minutes while the legs are fresh.
Every race also has cutoffs along the way. A cutoff is the race telling you the pace that still gets you home. Cutoff times at every aid station shows how to read them one station at a time.
Can you hike a 50K?¶
Yes. At the median limit of 11 hours, a 50K asks for about 21 minutes a mile with stops included. A brisk walk of 17 minutes a mile covers 31 miles in about 8.8 hours, which leaves two hours and change for aid stations and the slow parts.
Three things change the answer for a particular race.
- The limit. The median is 11 hours, and half of the 32 courses in the catalog give less. Read your race's number before you decide anything.
- The climbing. Walking uphill is slower than walking flat. A course with a lot of climbing is a different sum from a flat one, so give the climbing legs more of the clock than their share of the miles.
- The ground. Rock, roots and mud slow a walk the same way they slow a run.
A 50K walked from start to finish, with a plan for the stops, is a real race and a real finish.
Training for it is training to be on your feet for the whole limit. Time on feet vs mileage explains why hours matter more than miles for this.
How do I train to walk faster on climbs?¶
Walking speed responds to practice like any other speed. The advice from Relentless Forward Commotion is to practice walking on your long runs at the same scheduled intervals you plan to use in the race, by time, by mileage or by terrain, and to find a pace that lets you recover but is faster than a leisurely stroll.
In practice that means:
- Walk on purpose in training. Pick the climbs you will walk in the race and walk them on your long days at the effort you plan to hold. A stroll teaches you nothing about hour nine.
- Find a steep hill and a treadmill. A treadmill at 3.5 miles an hour is a brisk walk. Raise the incline for the climb days.
- Time your walking splits. On a long day, note how many minutes a mile your climbing walks take. That number, not a guess, is what the arithmetic above needs.
- Train poles before race day. If you plan to carry them, use them on long days first.
- Keep the long day long. Hours on your feet are the training. A slow five-hour day on the trail counts.
If a calf, a hip or a foot hurts in a way that changes how you walk, take it to a physio or a doctor before the next long day.
Where NavRun fits¶
If you have a race picked, NavRun can put the arithmetic on the race page. The Cutoff times table lists each aid station with the time you arrive at your goal pace, the cutoff, and the room between them in words, such as "8 minutes of room." The room is measured at Survival pace, which NavRun sets at 25% slower than your goal, so the room still holds if your pace drops late in the day. You need a goal and aid stations on the race for it to work out times, and you do not need the Crew to see it.
Where a race has not published a cutoff, the page says "Nobody has said what the cutoff is here" instead of guessing.
The slow miles¶
At mile sixty, in the dark, I wanted to be done. A stranger handed me broth, walked the next climb with me, and talked about nothing until I could run again. I never got their name. I still think about them on every hard climb.
Start with your race. navrun.app