Somewhere around 5 km/h — a kilometre every twelve minutes, a mile every nineteen. That's the tidy answer, and like most tidy answers it hides the interesting part: walking speed varies with age, height, and intent so much that researchers use it as a health indicator. Gait speed predicts outcomes well enough that some clinicians call it "the sixth vital sign".
Pooled studies put typical comfortable walking speeds at about 4.8–5.4 km/h for adults in their 20s through 50s, easing to roughly 4.3–4.9 km/h in the 60s and 3.9–4.6 km/h in the 70s. Men average a touch faster than women, mostly because they average taller — leg length is doing the real work. "Brisk" — the pace where health guidance starts counting it as moderate exercise — begins around 5.6 km/h (3.5 mph), or more usefully: you can talk, but you can't sing.
Speed needs distance, and distance needs GPS or a measured route. Cadence — steps per minute — needs neither, and it maps cleanly onto effort: around 100 steps/min is the accepted threshold for moderate intensity, 130+ starts resembling a jog. It also self-adjusts for height: a tall walker and a short walker at 110 steps/min are working similarly hard while covering different ground. The pedometer shows live cadence for exactly this reason.
1 – Find a stretch you know the length of — a running track straight (100 m) is ideal, a measured block works.
2 – Start a session, walk it at your normal pace, and note steps and time. The stride calibrator automates exactly this measurement, start line to finish line.
3 – Distance ÷ time is your speed; steps ÷ minutes is your cadence; and distance ÷ steps is your true stride — which the stride calibrator measures and applies to the pedometer for you in one go. Want the cadence number higher? That's the cadence coach's whole job.
One honest caveat about all self-measurement: knowing you're being measured makes you walk faster. Researchers see it constantly. Do two passes and trust the second.