I don't even know how that would work, but 50 hours in a 24 hour time period would be a truly remarkable achievement.

For 2 hours, maintaining 4 mph is going to be very easy for most people, not 2.5. You could walk 4mph for 2 hours, rest for an hour, and continue. That gets you 64 miles with an insane amounts of rest. Even dropping it to 3mph, you hit 48 miles even if you rest one out of three hours. Pretty sure you could tough it out and walk an extra 40 minutes out of the 8 hours you are resting to hit 50 miles.

I am assuming flat land and no hills and stuff. 50 is a very easy floor to hit if sufficiently motivated. I agree that the 100+ estimates are either wrong or from someone incredibly well trained.

I can't run one mile in 6 minutes and I'm confident I could do it.

I mean, this isn't like the gorilla and 12 dead people. Why hasn't this been tested already?!

Because it's too hard to post while walking for 24 hours.

it would be great if somebody tried it. just go to a hs on a saturday and walk around the track.

Under these conditions, I'd say 0% would succeed.

yeah, id put a bullet in my brain after like lap 50

Because no one could go around a track for 24hrs?

The world record on a track in 24hrs is 188 miles.

That dude is a freak for sure. He also did 1000 miles in 10 days and 10 hours. Almost 100 miles a day 10 days in a row.

Yeah, because Yiannis Kouros did 188 miles on a track, random 2+2ers with bad backs, overweight etc., are going to go to a track on a Saturday and do 400 laps just for the hell of it.

well while it might be tedious i figured its flat and its an accurate distance just have somebody with a clicker to count laps. plus the newer soft tracks might not injure the random 2+2er

Let us know how you do this weekend.

hell no im not stupid enough to try this feat. i was just offering up a solution.

What if we pony up $50K for you?

I'm not reading 400 posts but my .02 (coming from someone who did a lot of hiking/walking/running in his late teens/20s, but wouldn't be considered a serious athlete).

A 4 mph walking pace is brisk but sustainable for someone in reasonable-to-good shape for very extended periods of time, but not 24 hours. By "reasonable-to-good shape" I'm talking about people accustomed to regular cardio exercise and has their wind up a bit. Exclude serious athletes from this group, and certainly couch potatoes.

Assuming flat terrain and the right walking shoes, I'd assume a reasonably fit person who doesn't do much walking would drop off from that pace within a couple of hours. They'll sweat out a lot of fluids and cramp up a bit as they replace them. Then their dogs will start barking a little and they'll be okay for a bit, pop a blister and put some moleskin on, change socks and suck it up. But they'll lose some of their wind and energy. However a lot of people thinking 50+ will also start having problems with their quads and calves locking up, sometimes knees, and if it hits your lower back it's all over.

A pretty good sample size I got to see was a battalion of infantry guys walking along side the Alaska pipeline for 100 miles. It was a four-day thing with rest at night. It was in boots and a very light pack (20 lbs or so) on bigger-size gravel. Not a direct comparison I know but then again the average light infantryman is much more accustomed to road marches. The completion rate was probably close to 100% for the first day/30 miles (we did less the last day), but about 70% for all four days. I can't remember how long each day was actually spent walking, I'm sure we spent 9-10 solid hours moving on average so the pace wasn't that fast. Even at the end of Day 1 we were pretty beat after maybe 12 hours.

After about a year of not doing much walking or running I decided to try to go for a 14 mi walk on a paved bike path (7 mi each way), shorts and sneakers, whole different story and took way longer than I planned, well over 4 hours. And that wasn't sustainable if I were trying for the most distance per day. I was definitely cramping up and pretty winded. I rested up and crashed in the car for 6 hours or so and did it again and despite a decent start it was pretty brutal by the end.

Ymmv, my guess is 30 miles in 24 hours is going the be the upper end for most people who are in decentish shape, but don't walk enough to have a good guess at what they can actually do. Cramps or one of the problems will probably do them in long before 24 hours.