Stride

“ Unconsciously he feels with his feet; they come to know the exact time to move, whether a long or short stride be desirable, and where to put down, not to rustle or cause a cracking sound, and accommodate themselves to the slope of the ground, touching it and holding it like hands. ”

“ In following an old male who had been travelling at full speed I found that its stride averaged twenty-eight feet, but at the same time he kept so close to the ground that midway of the stride, when one foot was carried forward, it scraped the sand. ”

“ Half a stride means some six or seven feet; to leave the ground that much too soon adds the width of a fair-sized ditch to his task, and if the sum total prove too much for him you cannot be surprised at the result. ”

“ The figures should tell whether they were growing shorter, longer, or merely happened to vary so much. A short stride commonly means "going slow," along stride, "going fast."
On Little Black Creek there is a hunters' camp. ”

“ You made a nice start to-day in the two-twenty and you used a nice stride when you found it, which wasn’t until you were pretty nearly to the tape, but you waved your arms all over the lot and never once used them to help your running. Now if you’re ever going to do anything in the sprints, or in the distances, either, you’ve got to learn how to use your arms. A sprinter runs with three things, Perry; his legs, his arms and his head. You use your legs fairly well, although you’re trying to get too long a stride for a chap with legs the length yours are ”

“ The first days passed in an ecstasy of physical motion, sleighing, skiing, skating, moving in an intensity of speed and white light that surpassed life itself, and carried the souls of the human beings beyond into an inhuman abstraction of velocity and weight and eternal, frozen snow. ”

“ There is in swift walking, when the muscles are hard, the wind long, and the atmosphere exhilarating, a buoyant rhythm that more, perhaps, than merited success, or valorous conduct, smoothes out the creases in a man's soul. ”

“ See how my feet are moving — awfully funny they look —
Moving as if they belonged to a someone that wasn’t me.
The wind down the night’s long alley bowls me down like a pin;
I stagger and fall and stagger, crawl arm-deep in the snow. ”

“ He must break into a run—a run so swift and headlong, as if in a race for a goal, that all her thought should be centered upon his control. She needed to feel the strong rush of the wind in her ears, the splendid sensation of being a part of the movement which she so enjoyed. ”

“ Therefore hastening with all speed, in order by their exceeding celerity of movement to anticipate all rumour of their motions, trusting to their strength and activity of body, they travelled by winding roads until they reached the high ground on the tops of the mountains, the steepness of which delayed their march more than they had expected. ”

“ Show that walking is a process of falling. Describe the process of running. What causes the swinging of the hand in walking? Why are we shorter when walking? [Footnote: Stand a boy erect against a wall. Mark his height with a stick. Now have him step off a part of a pace, and then several whole paces. Next, let him close his eyes, and walk to the wall again. He will be perceptibly lower than the stick, until he straightens up once more from a walking position.] Why does a person when lost often go in a circle? ”

“ Then there was a movement, a movement that blanched the watching faces to a more pallid white—that dangling, wobbling leg drew inward slowly, very slowly, and hip and knee, as though guided by some mighty power, immutable, supreme, came deliberately into normal form. ”

“ You travel along for many rods over excellent, dry, solid sleighing where the road is perfectly level, not thinking but you are within a foot of the ground, then suddenly descend four or five feet, and find, to your surprise, that you had been traversing the broad back of a drift. ”

“ The act of walking starts an engine in my sparkling infernal mind. And the weight and the sting and the hurt and the fascination of my walking thoughts bear down on my slim feet as they carry me along. ”

“ It is a motion unparalleled either in the natural or artificial world; it is a movement by itself—like the swoop of the eagle, the waddle of the duck, the fleetness of the greyhound, or the hop of the frog. ”

“ What else is the perception of movement but the seeing of a long series of different positions? If instead of looking through the zoötrope we watch a real trotting horse on a real street, we see its whole body in ever new progressing positions and its legs in all phases of motion; and this continuous series is our perception of the movement itself. ”

“ They keep running on with joy and spirit, investigating the trail through every turn, now in circles, now straight forward, now obliquely, through thick and thin, places known and unknown, passing each other by turns, moving their tails, throwing back their ears, and their eyes darting fire. ”

“ In the deep sleep that had come upon the crawler, arms and legs kept raising in a deliberate, dreadful climbing motion. It was as though they had a life of their own—they kept their movement independently of the motionless body. ”

“ First of all, a quarter of a mile away to windward, your eye is caught by an uncommonly high wave, rushing right upon your track, and heaping up slowly and constantly as it comes, as if some huge animal were ploughing his path steadily and powerfully beneath the surface. ”

“ But the style of walking we admire is moderate in velocity, perfectly rhythmical, unaccompanied by violent swinging of the arms, and giving us the impression that there is no conscious exertion, while there is no force thrown away. ”

“ The walking of man and all animals is a falling forward. All our manual labor and works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing and so forth, are done by dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever. ”

“ In walking, the step should neither be too fast nor too slow, too long nor too short, too much on the heel or too much on the toe. A simple, straightforward way of getting there is all that is wanted. ”

“ We see the ambition for speed exemplified even in the baby, who crows in exhilaration at rapid movement, and in the boy when the ride on the flying horses, the glide on the ice, or the swift descent on the toboggan slide, brings a flash to his eye and a glow to his cheeks. ”

“ The first movement is a movement of her hands. They rise slowly from her side and waver in the air like the hands of a person groping in the dark. Another interval—and the movement spreads to her lips; they part and tremble. ”

“ Moving on without any physical exertion—a smooth gliding motion, as on skates or in a sleigh—was of itself a pleasure, which the continuous changing of the scenery, with many sights new to them, intensified to very delight. ”

“ Beat after beat falls sombre and dull. The wind is unchanging, not one of us knows What will be in the final lull When we find the place where this dead road goes. For something must come, since we pass and pass Along in the coiled, convulsive throes Of this marching, along with the invisible grass That goes wherever this old road goes. ”

“ Spring was here and cast its largess at her feet,—fate held back her eager hand.
A year she must wait, a year in which to win those necessaries of the long trail, without which all would fail.
Travel, even by so primitive a method as canoe and foot, must demand its toll of salvage. ”

“ It is generally admitted that a step is constituted by the series of movements which are produced between the corresponding phases of the action of one foot and that of the other—for example, between the moment at which the right foot commences its pressure on the ground and that at which the left foot commences its own. ”

“ In others, the movement consists in balancing themselves slowly, from the right to the left, and from the left to the right, or inclining the body methodically forward and aft. There are other societies in which these motions commence seated, in measured cadences, with a staid countenance, the eyes closed or fixed upon the ground, and are continued on foot. ”

“ And the shape of the sign, and the way in which it is laid, tell what manner of person or animal passed, and how fast. Steps vary in size, and in pressure and in distance apart. A man at a very hurried walk is apt to leave a deeper toe-print, and a loaded horse sinks deeper than a light one. ”

“ He has four: a short walk, like the rolling of a small boat in a chopping sea; a long walk, which dislocates every bone in your body; a trot that reduces you to imbecility; and a gallop that is sudden death. ”

“ And so he sits in expectation!
The verdant pathway, in and out,
Winds upwards like a straggling chain;
And, when two toilsome miles are past,
Up through the rocks it leads at last
Into a high and open plain. ”

“ They totter beneath the great weight, and the walk is a sort of waddle, in which the long and prodigiously strong arms are used in a clumsy way to balance the body, and keep up the ill-sustained equilibrium. ”

“ Meanwhile the climbing and leaping from branch to branch, the measuring with the eye of distances and strength of branches, the power of grasping the right point at the right instant, and all the complicated series of movements combined in this form of locomotion furnished a marvellous set of exercises not only for the muscles but for the higher centres in the cortex of the brain. ”

“ Man's walk is a series of rhythmic stumbles against this force that constantly strives to drag him down to earth's face and keep him pressed there. Gravitation is an etheric—magnetic vibration akin to the force which holds, to use your simile again, Drake, the filing against the magnet. A walk is a constant breaking of the current. ”

“ It is known that bodies in motion always describe some line or other in the air, as the whirling round of a fire-brand apparently makes a circle, the water-fall part of a curve, the arrow and bullet, by the swiftness of their motions, nearly a straight line; waving lines are formed by the pleasing movement of a ship on the waves. ”

“ The path, or track rather, changes direction at every moment, wriggling in and out among the rocks, over fallen masses, down descents where the brambles throw long streamers across one's path to arrest progress ”

“ The time of a step in quick running, compared to that in quick walking, is nearly as two to three, whilst the length of the steps are as two to one; consequently a person can run in a given time three times as fast as he can walk. In running, the object is to acquire a greater velocity in progression than can be attained in walking. ”

“ With continuous but gentle movements of arms, feet, and shapely form, the outline of which is sometimes veiled, and at other times revealed amid the folds of her gauzy garments of ever-changing rainbow-like tints, she appears like a supernatural being sent to teach us the poetry of motion. ”

“ When we passed Long Branch the motion was a steady rock from side to side, that made one feel like a baby in a cradle, and before bedtime it was a violent swing that flung one about like a toy, and tossed the furniture around like doll-house belongings. ”

“ Movement, rapid movement of some kind, a ride, the hasty survey of a shelf of books, best of all a conversation like this morning's with a visitor for the first time,—amid the felicitous chances of that, at some random turn by the way, he would become aware of shaping purpose: the beam of light or heat would strike down, to illuminate, to fuse and organise the coldly accumulated matter, of reason, of experience. ”

“ Their movements illustrate the poetry of motion, as they come sailing grandly in from the ocean spaces, and circle about their own particular hillock in glorious dips and curves and mountings upward, that fill the human observer with longing and envy. ”

“ Confronted with these new and strange shapes in the sky, some making stately journeys of hundreds of miles, others whirring hither and thither with the speed of the whirlwind, wonder quickly gives way to the all-absorbing question: How do they fly? ”

“ To improve our speed and wind, we often took long runs into the country. Tam o’ Shanter’s mare outran a lot of witches,—at least until she reached a place of safety beyond the keystone of the bridge,—and we thought perhaps we also might be able to outrun them. ”

“ The velocity and various shiftings of the sun-beam, reflected from a piece of crystal or polished steel in the hand of a boy, give a much stronger idea of the violent agitation and sudden shiftings of thought than the image of the trembling light of the sun or moon reflected from a vessel of water. ”

“ In fact, on observing the superposition of the different parts of these curves with the curve of translation, we see that the body receives an increase of velocity about the middle of the period when either foot is on the ground. ”

“ Nevertheless, movement in a circle is the most “natural” movement; and the long arm of the lever, moving, as it does, in the larger circle, has the greater amount of this natural motion, and consequently requires the lesser force. ”