Usual and Fast Walking Speeds

Stable patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease will demonstrate their usual and fast walking speeds over a 30 m course, with speed calculated over the middle 10 m using optical sensors. The test will be repeated after a 5 minute rest; this procedure will then be repeated on two subsequent days, at the same time of day, within one week.

Participants will be asked to demonstrate their usual and fast walk speeds over the middle 10 meters of a 30 meter straight track using optical sensors and a hand-held stopwatch. Participants will be instructed to walk at their 'usual' and 'fast' speeds as standardized instructions. The walk test will be repeated after a 5 minute rest and then repeated on two subsequent days, at the same time of day, within one week. This will be simply observational in nature with no planned intervention aside for controlling walking environment.

The primary outcome is going to report a change in walk speeds from baseline and at 1 and 2 days using repeated measures as described by Bland and Altman (reference below).

Assess agreement between the use of optical sensors and stop watch time for the usual and fast walk speeds.

The usual and fast walk speeds will be used to predict the test speed for a high-intensity constant-speed endurance test that will achieve an acceptable endurance time of 2-15 minutes.