Walking records: the farthest anyone has walked in a day, and the longest walks ever

How far can a person walk? Further than most of us will ever try. Here are the records for one day of walking without sleep, the longest walks anyone has made, and what those distances mean in steps.

The short answer

The farthest anyone has walked in 24 hours, according to Guinness World Records, is 228.93 km (142.25 miles), by Jesse Castenda of the USA in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on 18 and 19 September 1976. The women’s record is 211.25 km (131.27 miles), by Annie van der Meer-Timmermann of the Netherlands in Rouen, France, on 10 and 11 May 1986. The longest walks of all took years: Jean Béliveau walked about 75,000 km (47,000 miles) around the world over eleven years, from 2000 to 2011.

The farthest walk in a day

Record	Distance	Who, where, when
24 hours, men	228.93 km (142.25 miles)	Jesse Castenda (USA), Albuquerque, New Mexico, 18 to 19 September 1976
24 hours, women	211.25 km (131.27 miles)	Annie van der Meer-Timmermann (Netherlands), Rouen, France, 10 to 11 May 1986

For a sense of scale, 228.93 km in 24 hours is an average of about 9.5 km/h (5.9 mph) for a whole day and night, nearly twice a normal walking pace, without sleep. A normal walker covering the same distance at 5 km/h would need about 46 hours of walking.

How many steps is a record day?

Race walkers take longer, faster strides than everyday walkers, so any step count for the record is an estimate. At the step length of an adult of average height walking normally, 228.93 km would be about 325,000 steps, more than 30 days of 10,000 steps, in a single day. A record walker’s longer stride would bring it down, but it would still be in the hundreds of thousands.

The longest walks ever

Some walks are measured in years, not hours. Wikipedia keeps a list of people who have walked around the world, and among them:

• Jean Béliveau, 2000 to 2011, about 75,000 km (47,000 miles), the longest continuous walk around the world.
• Karl Bushby set off from the southern tip of Chile on 1 November 1998 to walk home to Hull in England without any motorised transport, a planned 58,000 km (36,000 miles), crossing the frozen Bering Strait on foot in 2006.
• Tom Turcich, 2015 to 2022, about 45,000 km (28,000 miles), with his dog Savannah.
• Dave Kunst, 1970 to 1974, 23,250 km (14,450 miles), the first walk around the world to be independently verified.

Across a single country, John Lees walked from Los Angeles City Hall to New York City Hall in 1972 in 53 days, 12 hours and 15 minutes, which the list of walks across the United States records as the world record for crossing the country on foot. More in how long it takes to walk across the US and around the Earth.

How far can an ordinary person walk in a day?

Much less than a record, and still a lot. At a normal pace of 5 km/h, eight hours of walking covers about 40 km (25 miles). On long-distance trails, people settle into 20 to 30 km (12 to 19 miles) a day that they can repeat for weeks. See how many miles the average person walks a day for the everyday version.

A reason to walk today

The hard part of walking more is not the walking. It is having a reason to go out today. reTrek gives your walks a finish line: pick a famous route, like the Camino de Santiago or the Inca Trail, and every walk moves you further along it, with a short film about the place waiting at each milestone. You stop looking for a spare moment to walk and start walking to reach the next milestone.

Everest Base Camp is free. Get reTrek.