Goofy is the image that race walking brought to my mind until I met Ralph Dehner (pronounced Day-ner) one rainy Monday morning at the Mighty Vine Wellness Club in Clifton. Mr. Dehner has been president of the Cincinnati Walking Club he founded since 1999.

Race walking at Winton Woods park are Sara Sheets, Gwen Thomas, Oscar Rosen, Ralph Dehner, Barb Whipp and Bill Whipp. (Michael Snyder photo) | ZOOM |

        I wanted to know what would make someone take up race walking.

        “I've been athletic all my life,” he says. “I was a runner but had problems with foot and leg pain. So I switched to biking. I would bike back and forth to work. But I kept getting hit by pickup trucks. Luckily I wasn't injured, but I started walking to work — three miles there and three miles back.”

        Sounds like a healthy decision, but why racing?

        “Sometimes I'd be a little late for work so I'd pick up my pace. I entered a local race that had a walking division and I won, so that encouraged me to keep doing it. I was a fitness walker — walking as fast as I could with no particular technique.

        “For three years I won all the races I entered. But every so often there would be a race-walking division, and I'd watch these guys who were a lot older than me walk a lot faster. They said if I could learn real technique I could go pretty fast.”

        Even Mr. Dehner was a bit put off by the way race walking looked.

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Proper technique

        “I was a little intimidated by the technique when I saw it. I think it intimidates a lot of people because you see this little hip turn and arm pumping thing going on and you think, "God, I could never do that.'

        “To learn it you have to slow down a bit, and I didn't want to do that,” Mr. Dehner says. “But I would walk our baby around the neighborhood at night to put her to sleep and I thought while I'm walking slow I might as well try this.That's how I taught myself. By the time she was six months old, I entered a race and came in second to a really good race walker. After the race he said, "Ralph you're almost race walking.' I thought I was. He showed me a few more things to refine my technique and once I got those down my speed really increased.”

        Mr. Dehner's fastest time for a 5K race is a 9-minute mile. He explained that a world class race walker will average a 7:20 minute/mile for the 50K Olympic race walk (longer than a marathon).

        I'm not new to fitness walking. I've even attempted a marathon. So I thought I'd try race walking myself. I asked Mr. Dehner for a quick lesson, and he directed me to a nearby treadmill. I started out at 1 mile per hour and as I began to walk he explained what to do next:

        • Land heel first with the toe slightly elevated, and your heel close to your body, and then roll through the toes to push off.

        • The natural movement of the hips gets exaggerated by a forceful push off behind you.

        • That opens up the hips and allows a greater range of motion.

        I felt like I wasn't getting it.

        Mr. Dehner was encouraging though. “Your knees are really close to being straight. You're doing that part really well. You're not overstriding in front which is a big problem for people. They think that to go faster you need to reach out with your foot in front, but you want to keep your stride close to the body.”

        Mr. Dehner explained there are only two requirements for legal race walking. One is that when the front heel hits the ground the leg needs to stay straight until it passes the hip. The other is when the back foot leaves the ground, the front heel must be touching, so the walker is not airborne at any time (unlike running which is really a series of jumps.)

        After Mr. Dehner's coaching I headed over to Winton Woods Pavilion Tuesday evening to meet the Cincinnati Walkers Club. Sara, Gwen, Barb and Miriam showed me some warm-up exercises to do and then we hit the trail.

        It looked graceful and effortless. I was power-walking beside them but they seemed to be gliding. As we circled the lake and climbed an incline, I began to feel a tightening in my calves. My companions appeared to be barely warming up. These women were veterans of marathon-length (26-mile) walks and it showed.

        Sara Sheets, of Walnut Hills, who's been race walking for less than a year, explained:

        “I'd been (fitness) walking for about 10 years and I was always thinking "how can I get faster, how can I get faster.' ” She learned how to race walk last summer at a clinic in Cincinnati. “I did the L.A. marathon this year. They have a race walking division and I came in third.” Ms. Sheets currently ranks first for women walkers in Cincinnati.

        According to Mr. Dehner, it is a full-body exercise. “Race walking differs from running in that you are using the upper body. World class race walkers are actually more fit than world class marathoners. It takes alot more effort to walk a 7-minute mile than to run it, due to the constraints of the technique. Your upper body contributes about 30 percent of your momentum.”

        Mr. Dehner says race walking is practically injury-free. “In running, you land with three times your body weight. In walking, 1.2 times your body weight hits the ground each time, so it's a lot lower impact.” He adds: “Walking is a not a muscle wasting activity like running. (World class marathoners) have very little muscle in their bodies. You can't build or maintain muscle mass with long-distance running.” For this reason, body builders are told to do sprinting but not long distance running to increase their cardiovascular fitness.

        Race walking instructor Suzy Shunk, formerly of San Diego, is founder of Loveland Sport Walkers, a walking group that meets three times a week on the Loveland bike trail. I asked her how Cincinnati can become a mecca for race walkers as her former hometown is.

        “I think walkers need to have more visibility, more recognition and acceptance. Tons of walkers do races, lots of walkers do marathons. In fact, a lot of walkers come in ahead of runners.”

        She acknowledges that change is slowly happening. “More and more of these races, especially the short ones, are awarding walkers trophies and recognizing that those who finish at the top are just as deserving as runners who finish in the top of their age group and gender. It's starting to happen, but other than the 5K's its still slow here in Cincinnati.”

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