How long does it take to walk 4km

Increased fitness

If you walk regularly means you walk daily, or at least a few times a week for about 30 minutes or longer. When you walk regularly, much like other kinds of moderate and low impact physical activities that involve the whole body, you can greatly improve your cardiorespiratory fitness and function. Also, once you become a regular walker:

• You are less likely to fall and suffer leg or hand fractures because your bones are stronger.
• You are less likely to sustain any injury because your joints have a better range of motion and the muscles are more flexible.

Improved capability to control body weight

Your body weight reflects the balance between the calories you take in as food and the calories you expend through your normal daily physical activities in life. Walking for 30 minutes at a brisk pace covers a distance of 2.0 to 2.5 km and burns about 125 calories (520 kiloJoules). This amount may not seem like much, but if you walked five days a week within one year you would burn over 32,000 calories which would burn off more than 5 kg of fat.

Improved mental health

Walking, particularly when walking with good company and in pleasant surroundings, reduces depression and anxiety. Walkers also tend to have better sleep.

Recovery from illness

Gentle walking is often prescribed for people suffering from a variety of medical conditions.

At the beginning you may be able to walk only a short distance at a slow pace, but with time you will soon be able to increase your distance and pace.

This rule assumes a reasonable level of fitness, but Tranter’s corrections can but used to change the time to suit a particular level of fitness.

Naismith’s Rule first makes a calculation based on distance over time.  eg if your walking a 4km/h for 4 km it will take you one hour.  Not rocket science.  But it adds a bit over an hour and a half for every 1000m you climb and about three quarters of a hour for every 500 meters you descend.

I have include two methods to help you in your trip planning.  Firstly a calculator and secondly a Nomogram that you can use with a ruler in the field.  Have a play with both

• Naismith’s Rule Calculator
• Naismith’s Rule Nomogram
• How to use Naismith’s Rule Nomogram

This Nomogram below can be used to calculate the estimated walking time.

Naismith’s Rule Nomogram

At first this Nomogram can be a bit overwhelming to look at.  But don’t stress I think you will pick it up quickly.

First you need to pick an altitude shift line. 

Move from right to left to find the line that represents the number of meters you will climb in total, next

Move down the number of meters you will descend in total.

Follow this new line up and to the left (this is your altitude shift line)

see here we plan to climb 700m and descend 1000m

Next we keep going up the altitude shift line until we get to your estimated walking speed. 

This is our pivot point.

In this example it is 4km/h

Now just draw a straight line from the number of Kilometers you plan to walk, through the pivot point till you hit the Hours axis.  And voila you can read the estimated time.

In this example we will walk 10km and the answer is 4 and a half hours

If you wish to apply Tranter’s Corrections I have include a table below to help.

Fitness in the left column is the number of minutes that it would take you to climb 1000ft over 800m

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