One of my tasks is to declare if our planned walk is a going to be a “boot” walk or a “shoe” walk. Usually the choice is easy but sometimes I err on the side of caution especially after bad weather. My walk log shows that, on average, our walks with boots rather than shoes over equivalent surfaces are between 0.3 to 0.5 km/hr slower. Given that we try to put the same amount of effort into walking in either shoes or boots, this implies that, unsurprisingly, boots require more effort than shoes so we should be more tired at the end. However, I cannot say I have noticed much difference in reality. I suspect that over time, we have acquired the knack of producing a fairly sustainable work rate. However, we have both noticed that after a certain distance, it does not seem to matter how far we go, we both feel we have had enough walking with between 500m to a km to go, irrespective of our chosen footwear!
