Time Taken to Walk a Thousand Miles to the Tempo of 500 Miles

by Richard Simon
May 2025

All measurements given in miles (mi) for public convenience.

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Note: It has been brought to the author’s notice that the title of the popular song here being scrutinized is not actually ‘500 Miles’ but ‘I’m Gonna Be.’ But hardly anyone knows this and one objects, besides, to the promiscuous abuse of transitive verbs in an intransitive context; contra E.F. Schumacher, to do is not to be.

Height of a Proclaimer = 0.00113636mi
Weighting factor for calculating male stride: 0.415h where h is the height of the strider

Therefore length of a Proclaimer stride = 0.00113636 x 0.415 = 0.00047159mi

Number of Proclaimer strides needed to cover 1mi = 2,120.48 (rounding off).              (1)

Tempo of ‘500 Miles’ (but see n.1) = 97bpm

Therefore time taken by Proclaimer to walk 1mi = 2,120.48/97 = 21.86min

Therefore time taken by Proclaimer to walk 500mi, or t1 = 10,930min;

Assuming no loss or gain of Proclaimer stamina over 2nd 500mi, then t1 = t2 

Therefore time taken by Proclaimer to walk (t1 + t2)mi = 21,860min or 364.33hr           (2)

and

Average speed per Proclaimer = 2.745mph.                                                               (3) 

Further assuming that Proclaimer undertakes 2 x 4hr marches/dy @2.745mph, then

Average daily distance covered = 21.96mi;

But Proclaimers are religious and will not walk on Sundays,[1] so

Average weekly distance covered = 21.96 x 6 = 131.76mi                                            (4)

Therefore time taken to walk 500mi + 500mi by the Proclaimers = 53.127dy[2]               (5)

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 [1] An earlier calculation neglected this important datum, leading to an erroneous result.

[2] The question of whether the final result will be affected by the fact that two Proclaimers are walking instead of one is left as an exercise for the student.

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