How fast do you walk?

[biggytitbo]

Why do so many people walk so slowly? I don't think I've got a massively fast walk but I'm constantly getting stuck behind dawdlers. Fair enough, if you have defective legs or are on a leisurely Sunday afternoon ramble in the Mendips then go as slow as you like. But in a busy town centre its just rude to walk so slowly you hold loads of people up and turn the pavements into obstacle courses for everyone else.

How fast is your walk? Do you have a speedy gait or are you a dawdling cunt blocking the pavements for normal people who have the good grace to walk at a reasonable pace?

[buttgammon]

I'm one of these people who walks so fast that they keep having to dodge out of slow bastards' way. If it wasn't for all of the groups of four or five people who walk in a long, slow line across the pavement, I'd be even faster, maybe even Usain Bolt pace. Well, maybe not.

[An tSaoi]

I tend to walk quite briskly. If I'm walking I'm going somewhere, so there's no point dawdling. I can't stand people ahead of me strolling along like they don't need to be anywhere. Some of them go the same speed as when you're walking through the delicate glassware section of shops; it's a step up from standing still.

When there's two of them it's even worse because they block you from passing.

[vrailaine]

I generally walk faster than anyone around me, if someone passes me out it consciously becomes a race in my mind.

When my knee is hurting or something like that and I have to slow down. I'll be very conscious of slowing other people down and that kind of thing. Can't stand when multiple slow walkers all stand in line and block the whole pathway too.

[biggytitbo]

Yeah I hate those go slow chorus line cunts.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

I'm quick, and am amazed at how oblivious slow-walking lines of people are to a fast bastard coming up behind them and trying to get round. Fascinatingly, I can walk fast but can't jog or run at all. My run, jog and fast walk are all pretty much the same speed, except jogging/running wears me out faster.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

People are genuinely oblivious to how much of a nuisance they are being. This gaggle of old dears were blocking the entire pavement waiting for a bus. The bus arrived. They realised it was the wrong one and started dawdling towards the proper one, still engaged in conversation, none of whom despite me being at least a foot taller the all of them seemed to acknowledge me. They knew I was there but they either didn't want to let me past or didn't care. It's not as if any of them were particularly infirm- if they'd been conscientious they could've waited in an orderly fashion- but instead they just blocked the entire path, getting in the way of dozens of people both coming and going.

I made a rude gesture to them as I eventually got past, so I think we know who won that one.

Kill the old, like Harold Shipman. Apart from the ones we're related to.

[Lyndon]

Fuck this shit, the second tag is right, lay some SPEEDS down, show us what you got. I used to do the 2.5 mile walk to Uni in about 40 minutes last year. So 3.75 mph. I could count the number of times I was over-taken by other walkers on that route with one hand. I don't walk so fast since I started running this year, my shins get sore. Still do a lot of over-taking though. What I really like doing is over-taking people who are walking fast by taking a more efficient trajectory than them, which mainly involves crossing roads in long diagonals, while Pythagoras and I laugh at those fools taking sides a and b of that right angled triangle.

[biggytitbo]

This bloated business cunt was dawdling along the pavement earlier, so fat he took up the entire width and smoking a huge cigar which he kept swinging out to his side with his arm and the fucker almost put a burn hole in my coat. Fat turd.

And ohh fuck, don't even get me started on those jizz that have those massive oversized golfing umbrellas and don't care if they have everyone's eyes out within a 10 mile radius. They are truly the biggest cunts of all.

[ziggy starbucks]

I like to walk quick and imagine I'm a racing driver. I don't just overtake people, I like to walk directly behind them so I can get into their 'slipstream' (fast moving air) then move out to the right or left just before I walk into the back of them. As I'm doing this, Murray Walker is commentating in my head describing the action like so

"Oh God! Zimmy Starducks takes the lead of the pedestrian pavement grand prix!"

I imagine most of you whores do the same thing

[chocky909]

Golfing umbrellas are nothing Biggy, I saw a woman the other day at the bus stop and I swear she was holding a picnic table umbrella. She needed both arms just to keep it upright.

[biggytitbo]

Golfing umbrellas are nothing Biggy, I saw a woman the other day at the bus stop and I swear she was holding a picnic table umbrella. She needed both arms just to keep it upright.

What a shit!

[Twibbie]

Oh stop being such a bunch of moany old misery-gutses. I walk pretty briskly, except for in the summer, and navigating my way around the slower members of the public is at worst an occasional and momentary delay and more often a piece of piss. I like seeing people amble around; not everyone has somewhere they need to to be immediately and there's no need for them to get into a fluster just to appease the pavement gestapo.

[vrailaine]

And ohh fuck, don't even get me started on those jizz that have those massive oversized golfing umbrellas and don't care if they have everyone's eyes out within a 10 mile radius. They are truly the biggest cunts of all.

Especially when there's only one person under it.
Seems the larger the umbrella, the less people there'll be using it.

Twibble, the problem is people not acknowledging the needs of others, not their actual speed, innit?

[massive bereavement]

BEEP BEEP. Excuse me.

[Ginyard]

I like to wear a fat suit and walk really slowly down oxford street.

[PAGATRON]

6 MPH

[Ginyard]

6.1 MPH

[rudi]

I like to walk quick and imagine I'm a racing driver. I don't just overtake people, I like to walk directly behind them so I can get into their 'slipstream' (fast moving air) then move out to the right or left just before I walk into the back of them. As I'm doing this, Murray Walker is commentating in my head describing the action like so

"Oh God! Zimmy Starducks takes the lead of the pedestrian pavement grand prix!"

I imagine most of you whores do the same thing

Whereas I imagined I was the only person who does this. This has cheered me up no end. :-)

[Serge]

I'm a pretty quick walker, though I'm quite good at nipping between slower walkers, though they probably don't appreciate me looking over my shoulder and shouting, "Ha! Eat my dust, suckers!" I'm particularly quick at work, though that's partly because Rough Trade has a very lo-o-o-o-o-ong counter with an exit at only one end, and I'm inevitably at the other end when someone asks me to find something for them. So I speedwalk to the right section and then back again to let them pay for it. Though if we had a human-size catflap at the other end, I wouldn't need to bother.

[Chauncey D.B.]

I'm quick, and am amazed at how oblivious slow-walking lines of people are to a fast bastard coming up behind them and trying to get round.

the problem is, just how close do you hover behind the slow-moving human detritus to make them get the message to speed up? too far is ineffectual and weedy, too close makes it seem, to them, like there is a genuine danger of imminent rape. me, i like to get as close as possible whilst avoiding rapey overtones, especially on kensington gardens in brighton, the world's most populated-by-slow-cunts street. sometimes, i hang back, but try and walk a bit louder.

[torz77]

I used to walk fairly briskly.

Then I read this thread.

Now I walk as slowly as possible.





Oh, and I started to get older too, don't have the blistering pace I once had.

[mook]

It really depends on how close it is to either opening time/last orders.

[23 Daves]

This is infuriating on a daily basis around Camden High Street, because often you just want to nip out to either go to the bank or get a sandwich, and you really don't want a slow-moving line of giggling teenagers or dawdling tourists to get in your way.  Still though, they do. 

There was a collection of tourists stood right in the middle of the pavement on Thursday, all eating noodles happily as if it were nothing unusual and they couldn't possibly have been in anyone's way.  That said, I do get the impression that people believe that nobody works or has anything purposeful to actually do in Camden, so they won't mind a bit more of the leisurely pace. 

As for people walking towards you in the opposite direction who tut at you or mutter under their breath when you both move to get out of each other's way in the same direction simultaneously - that's a bit unnecessary.  A completely hostile and humourless bint sighed, tutted and glared at me as if I were a war criminal for doing that last week.  It might not even have actually been my fault...

[Serge]

Oh fuck yes, Camden High Street is a nightmare. When I worked there I'd always try to get everything I needed for my lunchbreak before I got to work so I wouldn't have to waste half of my lunch getting to and from the shop.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

As for people walking towards you in the opposite direction who tut at you or mutter under their breath when you both move to get out of each other's way in the same direction simultaneously - that's a bit unnecessary.  A completely hostile and humourless bint sighed, tutted and glared at me as if I were a war criminal for doing that last week.  It might not even have actually been my fault...

I usually find people quite apologetic when they do that. To avoid that happening I choose to simply walk very purposefully in a straight line. This sends a signal to the person coming that they need to move left or right. It may not seem very nice but it is more effective than looking at each other and trying to second-guess where the other person is going.

[confettiinmyhair]

BEEP BEEP. Excuse me.

I actually had to arrest an old man last week who was driving one of these machines. He stole some organic steak. Consequently I reached him by walking extremely fast.

[non capisco]

Slow walkers I have no real problem with, it's people who suddenly stop dead in their tracks on a busy street and cause a human pileup that grind my gears. Or worse, people who swipe their Oyster card or put their ticket in to get through the barrier and then once through just stand still. You've not gone through into Narnia, mate. There are the same stream of people behind you as there were before.

I'm not a morning person. None of this bothers me on the way back home.

[23 Daves]

I usually find people quite apologetic when they do that. To avoid that happening I choose to simply walk very purposefully in a straight line. This sends a signal to the person coming that they need to move left or right. It may not seem very nice but it is more effective than looking at each other and trying to second-guess where the other person is going.

People are usually fine with it, but once every so often you meet some curmudgeon who is hopelessly twatty about it, as I did last week.  I might add that to my list of trivial ways you can spot arseholes, actually, along with being unnecessarily rude to waiters and talking loudly during acoustic songs at gigs.  Nobody who does any of these things can possibly be a good human being.  NOBODY.

Slow walkers I have no real problem with, it's people who suddenly stop dead in their tracks on a busy street and cause a human pileup that grind my gears. Or worse, people who swipe their Oyster card or put their ticket in to get through the barrier and then once through just stand still. You've not gone through into Narnia, mate. There are the same stream of people behind you as there were before.

Last week I observed a gentleman dangling his Oyster Card over the reader rather than swiping it.  Either he'd entirely misunderstood the entire system, or his brain had in someway frozen mid-process.  I wasn't actually in a hurry on that occasion and just stood behind him to see if he'd eventually do something - sure enough, after eight seconds or so (which nonetheless felt like half a minute) he finally swiped the card.

People sometimes behave ridiculously like computers with too many processes running at once.  "No, I can't swipe the Oyster Card now, because I'm too busy illegally downloading a Kevin Spacey film with the rest of my memory, and I'm thinking about chocolate truffles as well".  Something like that.   

[session9]

When I'm walking along Underground corridors and platforms, I like to get in front of people who are obviously better than all of us because they walk fast, and then I slow right down. I even try and stop them overtaking (without making it obvious that's what I'm doing). Ha Ha.

I used this behaviour as a way to extract revenge this morning. Some guy sat next to me on a crowded train this morning and farted repeatedly. I opened the window and all that happened was that the fart smell was chilled. I made it plain that I was not happy about the situation, but the cunt ignored me. He might have been ill, but he could have held it for a few minutes, so still a cunt IMO. Unbeknownst to him however, he was messing with the wrong colon - I have a fairly bad gastro-intestinal condition, and did eat curry for dinner last night. So, when the train terminated, and we both got out, I made it my mission to get in front of him at the same ticket barrier. He was a fast walker like you lot, but I just got in front of him, and managed to trap him there whilst I wreaked my rancid revenge. It was silent but deadly, in the grand tradition of such things. I was nonchalant and offered no sign that I knew what was going on, but I'm guessing the growing line of people behind him were none to happy with him - ah well, call it karma. I was so chuffed that I almost failed to notice that I hit Rory McGrath a glancing blow as I rushed to my morning destination. He looks a right fucking state.

Carry on.