Conversational Pace, and How to Test for It
A whole module on posture behind us — shoulders, chin, hips, knees, all the things you carry with your body while you walk.
Now here's a question I've been dodging: what is the pace, exactly? I keep saying "slow" over and over and trusting people to work out what I mean. Let me finally put a test on it.
Here it is. If you can't hold a full conversation, you're going too fast.
That's the whole standard. Not a heart rate number, not a time per mile, not a zone on a watch I've already told you I don't want you wearing. Can you talk? Can you actually get a sentence out without gasping partway through? If the answer's no, you've left conversational pace and you're doing something else — and something else isn't what this group is for.
Why conversation is the test and not the goal
I said earlier in this course that I think conversation is doing real work on these walks, not just filling the time. I still believe it, though I couldn't tell you exactly what the work is. Something happens between two people walking side by side that doesn't happen face to face across a table. Maybe it's not looking at each other. Maybe it's the rhythm of the steps doing something to the rhythm of the talking. I don't know. I just know it happens.
But that's a separate point from the one I want to make here. Here I'm using conversation as an instrument — a tool for measuring pace, the way you'd use a level to check whether a shelf is straight. You're not walking in order to talk. You're using your ability to talk as a readout on whether you're walking slow enough.
How to test it on your own
You don't need a partner to run this test, which matters, because some mornings you'll be out there alone.
Talk to yourself. Out loud, quietly, or just narrate in your head at speaking speed, not thinking speed. Describe what you're seeing. If you can get through a full sentence without your breathing chopping it into pieces, you're at pace. If you're gasping between words, slow down until you're not.
Another way, if talking to yourself on a public trail feels strange — and I get that — count. Not steps; I've already told you how I feel about that. Count how many words you can say per breath. If you're down to two or three words before you need another, that's not conversational pace, that's cardio, and cardio's fine, it's just not what we're doing here.
A third way, and it's the one I actually use most mornings by myself: sing something under my breath. Badly, doesn't matter. If I can get through a line of a hymn or whatever's stuck in my head that day without running out of air, I'm slow enough. If I can't, I back off.
The week I tried to kill conversation entirely
Let me tell you about the time I got this exactly backwards.
A couple years ago I read something online about silent walking — the idea being you walk without talking at all, let your mind do whatever it does without a conversation partner interrupting. I liked it enough that I brought it to the group and announced we were trying it for a week. No talking on the loop.
Nobody liked it. I could tell by day two. People were quiet in that stiff, waiting-it-out way, not the comfortable kind of quiet. By day three half the group was talking again anyway, quietly, like they were getting away with something. I didn't say anything. I let it happen, and by the end of the week the rule was dead and I never brought it back up.
What I learned wasn't really about silent walking, which might be great for some people on their own. It's that I'd confused my preference for what works on my solo loops with what this group actually needed. The foothills loop does something for my head when I'm by myself and quiet. This group isn't that. It's the talking itself doing the work — or at least a work I can't fully explain. I got it backwards for about a week, and then the group corrected me, which is usually how it goes.
A caution, plainly
If you're new to walking regularly and you're breathing hard even at what feels like a normal pace, that's worth paying attention to, especially going uphill or at elevation, which does make you work harder than you'd expect even on a gentle grade. Some of that's just being out of practice and it'll ease over a few weeks. But if you're getting lightheaded, or your chest feels tight, or something feels off in a way that's more than "out of shape," stop, mention it to somebody, and see somebody if it keeps happening. I'm a PT, not your doctor, and I'd rather you check than push through it because you didn't want to interrupt the walk.
Before next time
Try the talking-to-yourself test on your own once before we're together again. See where your actual conversational pace lands — it might be slower than you think.