The BBC keeps up interesting reporting on aging and longevity…
I’ve always walked in the slow to medium range, a habit acquired living in remote mountain regions with lots of vertical ascent and decent over the course of the day and often carrying loads.
Makes me wonder about whether some measure of intensity might prove a better metric.
@Alpha Agreed! I often walk carrying 25kg in my pack - those scientists would call me slow and small brained (my wife would probably laughingly agree!)
Interesting. I’ve always walked very fast, and am the fastest walking person I know. It’s an odd thing, as if there is some kind of internal compulsion - I don’t know if this can be learned or controlled. When I walk with my wife, her pace is naturally slower than mine and so I try to match her, but find it very hard, so I resort to measures such as departing in a sideways semicircle and returning to her side like a bouncing ball. Can one really “learn” to change the pace of one’s walk? Seems set naturally.
I also hike in the local hills once/twice a week. It’s about an hours hike, some parts quite steep. I am without exception the fastest walking person uphill on these hikes as I pass other hikers. My wife instead prefers to run up the hill ahead of me, that way she doesn’t have to keep pace with me, and we meet at the top. In other words, I don’t slow down my pace much going uphill, because again, it seems set internally. So it seems like there’s an internal pace. If my wife wants to go faster, she has to run, in other words, it’s a different mode she switches to. Maybe you can walk faster/slower than your natural pace for short distances, but not longer, I don’t think. Fascinating.
I doubt it is aging directly but rather IQ/brain size (relative to height). IQ increases speed generally, also because it is otherwise all too boring. @CronosTempi is not alone; I would not be surprised if many high IQ people do not know anybody else walking as fast as them. You would think to find lots of 99.9 percentiles in the universities, but it is all just a job now. I walk high speed since being a kid. The only one I ever met keeping up with me was a Swedish heroine addict in Bangkok. That is how many geniuses end up in this clownworld today.
What is your IQ @CronosTempi ?
I don’t know, I’m not a big believer in IQ measurements. There is of course general intelligence, but I think people’s abilities tend to be greater in particular domains. I knew extremely talented mathematicians, who had very little ability to understand and predict human behavior, some have great business sense, but not other talents, some who have extraordinary memory and so on. It’s hard to put one number on a collection of talents which all may be very heterogenous.
I studied philosophy at the university, because I found it deeply involving and intellectually stimulating, whereas other subjects less so. I focused on analytical philosophy, foundations of mathematics and epistemology. I intended to pursue an academic career, and I met a lot of intelligent people in the philosophy department, but ultimately I found academia very limiting. I left and found fulfillment in the entertainment industry.
The rarest quality of mind, in my experience, is the ability to think for yourself, not being influenced by the intellectual tenor of the time period in which you are alive. The world you grow up in and live in exerts a giant gravitational force - being able to escape that force requires a very keen intellect.
How does this relate to speed of walking I have no idea. But it is true, that long walks are very conducive to a lot of creative thinking and ideas - and if you are a fast walker, you’re liable to go quite far and get quite far in pursuit of those “aha” moments 
.
“I’m not a big believer in IQ measurements”
got a remedy for you: measure it, try to change it even just five points (speed, coffee,…), fail, read what is predicted for your number, and then you might be ready for the articles you better never dare to cite…
100% agree.
It’s not rare for me to meet people who are exceptionally brilliant in their field, but it’s quite another thing for that brilliance to translate to other areas of their life. I often scratch my head and wonder how they were at the top of their filed while being such a moron 
When someone is a well rounded genius, it’s rare, and also incredibly impressive.
Our brains all work so differently. I can be reasonably smart in areas where logic/concepts/business are concerned, but I have almost no memory, so I can never excel in anything like science/math that require memorization.
PS, My husband is exceptionally smart and I can’t keep up with him. He finds it to be a job to hold back. My mother was also a very smart and speedy walker. Having said that, it’s hard to know how much is speed vs having longer legs! Knowing both of them, I always attributed it to not being able to be as idle… I’m excellent at relaxing
science/math do not require memorization, but understanding
law/business/med need memory for effectively arbitrary rules; physics is not arbitrary but could not be any other ways but all the ways it can be
Hmmmm, that is an interesting take and has me trying to figure out my brain a bit more. I’m stumped. I’m smart in some areas and absolutely stupid in others!
I was a stock broker and it never occurred to me I needed a memory to manage money/put together risk adjusted portfolios, etc… it all just made sense to me. Yes, I’d have to constantly refresh myself on tax law because, while it made sense, I couldn’t retain all of the particulars (obviously no one knows all of it, but I’m just referring to the pieces pertinent to me… estate planning etc).
On the other hand, if I’m making half a recipe and need to figure out what half of a 3/4 cup is, my brain implodes.
I used to think it was just about succeeding in what I was interested in (I’ve learned this is an aspect of ADD, which I have), however, I’m extremely interested in health/longevity, but I can’t absorb a study to save my life. I’d be lost without all of you. Go figure.
“It’s not rare for me to meet people who are exceptionally brilliant in their field, but it’s quite another thing for that brilliance to translate to other areas of their life. I often scratch my head and wonder how they were at the top of their filed while being such a moron”
two possibilities,
I am sure you would judge me to be a moron if you met me, and lots of people will agree with you
For clarity, when I say moron, I’m mostly just using that word with a bit of sarcasm…
I was just really just agreeing with CronosTempi’s opinion that people generally have greater abilities in a particular domain.
we all agree on that, but to use this as an argument for “not believing in IQ” is unscientific denial of certain parameters of deep relevance, which is yet another little hint for the nature of this forum, where people seem to be all about parameters, freely disclosing glucose levels and even up to sperm count, but certain numbers are taboo, and inspite of IQ clearly being impacted by and effecting aging.