Hold onto your top hats, we're striding into the historical world of competitive race walking! Can you even imagine walking 1000 miles in 1000 hours (FYI 1000 hours is nearly 42 days)

Image: Emma Sharp

Show Notes:

BBC: The strange 19th century sport that was cooler than football

Wikipedia: Foster Powell

National Galleries of Scotland: Captain Robert Barclay-Allardyce

Ultrarunninghistory.com: The Barclay Match

Old Weird Scotland: The Celebrated Pedestrian

Atlas Obscura: How competitive walking captivated Georgian England

Wiki: Emma Sharp and her very fancy walking suit

Ada Anderson

The Pedestriannes: America's Forgotten Superstars

Wikipedia: Pedestrianism

Edward Payson Weston

Ultrarunning history: The first Astley belt

First Women's six day footrace

Smithsonian: The terrible 1904 Olympic marathon

Transcript

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Trace Kerr.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we are going to talk about the exciting world of competitive walking.

[00:00:18] Speaker A: Okay, so you said pedestrianism, and I was like, is it politics?

Is it some sort of social, cultural construct? I didn't look it up, though.

[00:00:29] Speaker B: It's 18th and 19th century competitive walking.

[00:00:35] Speaker A: I'm out there with my top hat. I have my monocle. Watch out.

[00:00:39] Speaker B: Yes. Oh, drat. What's the show called? Brian Cranston was the Malcolm in the middle, and there is an episode where he does some trace walking. So if you haven't checked that out in a while, it's worth looking up because Brian Cranston has some sweet moves. But that is not the direction we're going today. Let's return back to the main trail here.

So let's talk about what it is.

Indeed. It was foot wagers, which actually started in the 17th century, when terrible rich people would wager to see whose footmen could keep up with the carriage. No. Yeah, people are terrible.

Let's see how fast the poor people can walk.

That's exactly what it sounds like. And the dudes inside are bedding. It's just like in the fast and furious where they lean their heads out of the carriage and they trash talk a little bit and then they go, and then their guys have to walk. I'm not sure if that's exactly what it's like, but that's what I'm imagining. So that's kind of the start. Foster Powell is supposedly one of the early proponents. He walked 100 miles in 21 hours and 35 minutes, which is wild.

[00:01:51] Speaker A: Go, Forest, go.

[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah, and I was doing the math on some of these mileages, and they're pretty fast miles. Like, I toot along and I feel pretty happy and just a l...

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