Crushing Calories in the Clwydians. Julia Kelly investigates walking vs running – which activity wins the battle of the burn?

There is so much information out there on so many different fitness activities that the internet can be an overwhelming place to be for someone seeking to lose weight or become fitter.

I decided to keep it simple this week and do my own straightforward and (not very) scientific experiment to work out what might be the most effective form of exercise I could do in an hour.

Since I have a dog that loves walking and this has to be done everyday anyway, I tracked the difference between walking 5k and running 5k in terms of the rate of calorie burn. 5 kilometres works as a distance as it usually takes around an hour to complete.

I planned a challenging route and then walked and ran the same 5k route over two days and monitored the findings. I deliberately planned a challenging route to try and get the maximum burn out of an hour. And as it turned out, my little experiment threw up some really big surprises…

The Route:

Route map on OS 1:50,000 map. Clwydian Range.   

The route is hilly to maximise the burn you could get from one hour’s exercise.

You can park in Maeshafn and then the route goes through the village following a path about one mile downhill past the edge of Colomendy to the river Alyn at the bottom, looping through the forest or ‘fairy glen’ as it’s known locally. The initial downhill is great for a brisk warmup.

It then follows the Llanferres/Maeshafn Road all the way up back through Maeshafn and straight up to the top of Moel Findeg. This is about a mile straight up an average 11% incline which shows no mercy nearly all the way up. This is steep as hills go and definitely gets you out of breath whether you walk or run it. It’s the moment to initiate your power tracks on the iPod!

However, the views at the top of Moel Findeg when you get there really are an excellent reward for your efforts even if you feel a bit of a sweaty mess when you get there. You get a panoramic view of Liverpool, the Wirral and Cheshire on one side and Moel Famau and Snowdonia from the other (on a clear day).

The path off the top loops back down from the ridge line at the top of Moel Findeg through a pleasant forest track and then back to Maeshafn village where you can jump in your car and get back home for a well earned rest. The last mile is variable terrain involving a mix of trail based ups, downs and flats to finish.

The Result:

Walking the Route

I followed the route in the morning both times and in similar weather conditions.

I walked it as assertively and quickly as I felt comfortable with at an average pace of around 5 kilometres an hour. I ran it under the same conditions the day after at a pace of just over 7 kilometres an hour. I tracked it as carefully as I could.

Here are the stats:

Category – 5.4K route	Walk	Run
Time taken	59.03	39.27
Average pace	5.5 kph	7.24kph
Initial calorie burn	639	676
1 hour after – calorie burn total	911	946

I was amazed that overall the difference between running and walking the exact same route was only 37 calories when I finished. And even more surprising was the tiny 2 calorie difference between running and walking calorie afterburn. In the hour after the exercise ended I burnt 272 calories after the run and 270 calories after the walk, meaning walking has a really impressive rate of afterburn.

Walking vs running? Who wins?

Doing either walking or running for an hour is a win-win situation in my opinion but…. essentially it depends what your goal is. If it’s just weight loss with a bit of toning then walking really appears to be a great way to burn calories. You feel minimal pain and pressure on joints and get a fantastic reward in terms of burn.

But if you’re trying to improve sporting performance then the run is better as my heart rate spent longer in the higher heart rate zones meaning my aerobic performance will get better, faster. You also save time if you run the route so that’s another advantage if you are trying to squeeze your exercise into busy days.

The calorie burn for both running and walking was high but it is a steep, challenging route. What this experiment has proven to me is that both activities are almost as good as eachother for just simply burning off some energy.

It’s heartening that if you put significant effort into a walk you can reap the rewards and if you are injury prone, want to take it easier on your joints or like your exercise a little more relaxing then walking really is a fantastic activity and you can maximise your burn by including inclines or walking at a decent pace.

When the nights are light and the weather is good, I would recommend ditching the gym while the sunshine lasts and getting out there.

Tracking apps used: Strava, MyZone Moves, Memory Map UK

From couch to 5k and back to the couch again

Moel Famau is one of the most walked hills in North East Wales. At 555m above sea level it’s a little hill but it punches above its weight for beautiful views and scenery.

It’s also a perfect distance for a walk to kick off a programme of 5 kilometre fitness walks that I am undertaking as part of my weekly activities.

I enjoy hill walking and my dog loves walking too. We both have hearty appetites so it seems a good way to help both him and me to stay fit, active and keep the weight off. However, in terms of making it count, I want the 5k walks we do to have some challenge. We don’t just want to walk, we want to feel the burn too.

People constantly underestimate the physical challenge of walking so I’m treating these 5k walks as ‘proper’ exercise to see what happens. This means including a bit of speed and inclines to get the heart rate up.

So for this walk, yes that meant I was planning on being brisk.

No that doesn’t mean either of us were wearing colour co-ordinated tracksuits and headbands, carrying little pink dumbbells in each hand. And most definitely, it’s only the dog that walks with a cute little waddle.

The route planned was to walk from the top car park or ‘Bwlch Pen Barras’ to give it the correct name. We went straight up the trail to the right of the car park which forms part of the well-marked, Clwydian way stretch of the Offa’s Dyke path. We followed the path all the way to the top at Jubilee Tower, round the tower and straight back down again.

Flags indicate the start and the end. OS 1:50,000

The decent facilities, cheap parking and clear, well trodden paths make Moel Famau a really popular destination for both visitors to the area and locals.

But this was a rare day. Considering it was school holidays, it was was quiet. The car park was unusually empty and there were no families with baby-slinging mums and dads in sight.

This may have had something to do with the wild wind, driving rain and showers of hail stones.

It was absolutely not a day for hanging around, but howlingly-bad weather does give you excellent impetus to get the hell on with it where fitness activities are concerned.

I pushed open the car door with some difficulty which promptly gusted back, smacked me in the shin and caused a lot of swearing and hopping but undeterred I hauled open the passenger door too and out leapt the dog, sticking his beard straight into the wind.

Without further ado: hood up, ipod turned up loud, tracking apps initiated, we simply got on with it.

The ascent up Moel Famau is fairly steady and only becomes a challenge of significance in the final stage up to Jubilee Tower. On this day, it was made slightly more difficult admittedly by the hail giving me a free microdermabrasion treatment. The hood of my waterproof was glued firmly to the right side of my face going up and round the side of Jubilee Tower and the left cheek all the way back.

In bad weather, that little Schnauzer can shift, so we headed back down. Quickly.

Very quick selfie at the top! 

I’m not sure if our time would stand in ‘World Record’ terms as although we were fighting a mighty headwind on the way up, we were wind assisted on the return journey, benefitting from a turbo-powered tailwind that swept me off my feet twice on the way back to the car park.

But actually, despite the weather it was fun and quick and I felt as fatigued as I do after running.

When we got back home the dog returned straight to his couch and slept for hours and I have to confess after all the exertion, I joined him.

The stats are in…

I tracked the walk with Strava for distance, elevation and speed and also used MyZone Moves, heart rate monitoring system to track how many calories I would burn.

The walk was 5.5 kilometres, 199m of elevation gain and we moved at an average speed of 6.2k/ph which is reasonably quick. It took 53 minutes from car door to car door with mini photoshoot at the top!

Strava stats

Calorie burn was over a whopping 700 which is a fantastic rate of return for one hour’s exertion compared to the sweat and joint pounding involved in running that same distance.

Next week I will be walking and running a 5k route to test the difference between the calorie burn of both activities so watch this space…

Coping with injury and the merits of being upside-down

Blogging about exercise is a little difficult when you’re not doing any and I’m not a fraudulent person.

I have found myself sinking slowly into the mires of an exercise-starved depression since I suffered an injury two weeks ago on a Scottish hillside during a mountain expedition.

Not that I wish pain or a near-death experience on myself, I really don’t. But there are some people who get a really good story to tell when they sustain an injury in the mountains.

Tumbling down a precipice, breaking your leg and struggling back to base camp a la Joe Simpson in Touching the Void? Sawing your own arm off with a pen knife like in 127 hours?

No. Not for me. I didn’t get the drama of a delicious tale to tell people of brave heroism and sporting disaster upon my return from the expedition.

Essentially, I just fell over in the dark going to the loo.

An ultra-powerful Petzl headtorch proved no match for my innate clumsiness. While making my way through a field in an effort to find a suitable spot to have a bit of private ‘wild camping’ bathroom time, I stumbled over a fence post and fell, totally inverting my ankle. It couldn’t have been less dramatic.

I knelt on the floor in the pitch black while pain seared straight up my leg. It then went slowly numb while I tried to pretend that what had just happened, hadn’t really happened atall. Oh yes… and I was still desperately busting for the bathroom…

Don’t laugh. It’s not funny.

Well, maybe it is a bit but…

It has been a long time since I’ve carried an injury of any significance but here I find myself two weeks later, x-rays done with an annoyingly stubborn leg injury and a bruised sense of mental wellbeing.

I am not someone who is used to being inactive. My body doesn’t like it, it’s struggling to know what to do with this situation. All the activities I normally do can’t be done. My brain doesn’t like it either.

Couple this with an unexpectedly intense time in my working life, which is a situation that normally would have absorbed and rationalised through doing some exercise, I have found myself stumbling down a dark alley into a dark new world.

This is a world where the nights are drawing in and I spend my evenings watching terrible movies on the Syfy channel, surf bad medical advice on the internet, forlornly check my Strava feed to see what my active friends are up to, do lots more work for my day job and peer repeatedly at the stubborn swelling on my ankle with a renewed sense of injustice.

I find myself spying on people flying around the roads on their bikes from the sanctity of my car and scowl at their arrogance. How dare they pelt along the tarmac with their normal ankles? Whipping along without a care. Don’t they know what I’m going through!

Even my poor old dog, who is usually battering at the door with his little furry paws for a good leg stretch in the hills, is also out of action and on doggy anti-inflammatories. He is carrying a leg injury of his own.

We make a melancholy pair me and him. Plonked on the couch with elevated limbs and feeling very sorry for ourselves. To use a canine-based cliché, we have been licking our wounds.

But the wallowing phase has to come to an end. I have been a good girl. I have sat. I have rested. I have eaten digestive biscuits with aplomb and have drunk countless cups of tea for no apparent reason; but goddammit I’m British and this is what we do in times of personal crisis.

It has been two weeks. The offending limb is still pretty sore with suspected ligament damage but it is improving and I can rest no longer.

So what does a girl do when we can’t do what we want? Find a new hobby? A new activity? My doctor told me swimming would be good and I will take the advice and swim, but I’m no fish and I feel like it’s time to get a little more creative with my recovery phase…

First step. I have downloaded Patrick Beach’s handstand yoga from iTunes. I was scouting around the virtual world for some yoga type activity and quite simply it would take the pressure of my ankle, the guy has a fantastic beard and I enjoy a good handstand.

It was a suspiciously cheap purchase but as a lovely friend of mine pointed out, perhaps it’s well priced because handstand yoga has a rather limited audience. I will try Mr Beach’s activities but I’m not sure that’s going to be an effective solution in its entirety.

I’ll report back on the merits of upside down yoga shortly but all suggestions for any ankle-friendly fitness activities are welcome…

The fightback begins.

Bonking on Mountains ….. and how to avoid it

Unfortunately, I can be partial to bonking on mountains. And contrary to popular thinking and THAT trilogy of postmodern paperbacks by E L James…I can say categorically that it is not a pleasant experience.

The term ‘bonking’ in mountaineering and hillwalking has nothing to do with al-fresco shenanigans. I’ll leave that for someone else to blog (or brag) about. ‘Bonking’ is hill slang for when we suffer from glycogen depletion or perhaps you might know it as ‘hitting the wall’.

In short, it’s horrible and can ruin a beautiful day on the hills. Everyone is a little different but the surefire signs that I am about to bonk are: firstly I begin to feel fatigued; secondly my mood will darken and I’ll become really narky with absolutely everyone I’m with. It is at this point when, through bitter past experience, I’ll generally recognize what’s happening to me and I’ll eat and drink something as a ‘bonk avoidance’ strategy.

If it goes past that stage and the initial signs are missed it’s common to start to feel physically shaky until you have to sit down and can’t carry on; you simply stall. Ironically, when you bonk it can make you feel nauseous and so you don’t want to eat or drink when it happens, but this is exactly what you need to do to aid recovery.

I spend a lot of time hill walking and also helping young people round mountains in a leadership capacity. I’ve had countless conversations over 10 years of working with women who say the physical demands of hill walking have taken them by surprise and it is definitely the most frequent incident I tend to deal with.

From my experience, bonking seems to hit us ladies more than the gents. I don’t know why. I’m not a scientist. I think the semantics of the word ‘walk’ deceives people into thinking it’s a mild leisurely activity or a just a pleasant past-time for – dare I say it – the slightly older lady or gentleman who are paid up, fleece-wearing members of the Ramblers’ Association.

I really don’t know why. Some of the fittest people I know are mountain enthusiasts, they are of all ages and complete some incredible challenges.

Lots of females I work with on the hills, particularly younger girls, see walking as a way to lose weight and tone up and there’s no denying it’s great for this, but often they don’t fuel it right as they mistakenly and perhaps naively think by eating less than normal, they’ll lose weight while they’re doing it.

This just spells disaster. You need to eat probably around twice what you would normally, and in all likelihood you’ll still burn more than that and lose weight anyway if that’s what you want to do. Tough single day walks or multi-day expeditions are no time for carb dodging.

Over the last few expeditions I have been on; including a 5 day wild camp in Scotland and 3 days this weekend in the Lake District, I have begun tracking my hill walking days with my heart rate monitor.

The rate at which we burn calories on the hills surprised even me as it’s comparable to lots of other cardio based fitness classes that I do.

This weekend I wore my heart strap for about 4 hours. For 2 hours of this slot I walked and for approximately 2 hours I was stationary. In those two hours I burnt 1263 kcals and that day I was carrying just a small day sack and not following a particularly hilly route. My peak heart rate reached 166 which is clearly in my fat burning zone.

In Scotland, carrying an 18 kilo pack, in just over 3 hours, again on a relatively flat route, I was pushing 2000 kcals.

My strategy for bonk avoidance is every 500 to 600 kcals I’ll eat something, even if I’m not hungry, because I know I’m processing about 500-600 kcals an hour on average during hill walking. Even if you have a big breakfast with cereal and a  a classic Lake District, Cumbrian style fry up, you’re quite likely to have burned it off in under 2 hours.

Snacks I take with me usually involve chocolate, nuts, cereal bars or homemade energy bars and these see me through so I can enjoy my walking and the beautiful scenery. Carrying hydration sachets is also a really good idea to pop into your water bottle if you’re having a wobble. Snacks need to be something slow burning and something that’ll get in your system relatively quickly.

Fuel a day on the hills right by enjoying the joyful act of eating A LOT – you’ll earn it and burn it – and you’ll have a brilliant day, get fitter and avoid the bonk!

My top three ‘kit bits’ this weekend:

Bags of mixed fruit and nuts!

MyZone heart rate monitor

North Face, Summit Series, mid layer down jacket – or my ‘long sleeved gilet’ as I called it in a moment of ‘semi-bonked’ fatigue (followed by merciless teasing by my companions)

This week’s stats:

Monday – Body pump and spin 976 kcals

Weds – Boxercise 454 kcals

Sat – Hill walking 1263 kcals

Sun – Run 600 kcals