1 . Race walking shares many fitness benefits with running, research shows, while most likely contributing to fewer injuries. It does, however, have its own problem.

Race walkers are conditioned athletes. The longest track and field event at the Summer Olympics is the 50-kilometer race walk, which is about five miles longer than the marathon. But the sport’s rules require that a race walker’s knees stay straight through most of the leg swing and one foot remain in contact(接触) with the ground at all times. It’s this strange form that makes race walking such an attractive activity, however, says Jaclyn Norberg, an assistant professor of exercise science at Salem State University in Salem, Mass.