The primary purpose of this study was to determine acceleration (AC) and deceleration (DC) distances that would accommodate young and older adults walking at their preferred and fast speeds. A secondary purpose was to determine the minimal walkway length needed to record six steady state (SS) steps (three full gait cycles) for younger and older participants walking at SS preferred and fast speeds. Thirty-four older adults (9 men and 25 women), M age = 82.1 years (SD = 6.6) and 43 younger adults (19 men, 24 women) M age = 22.8 years (SD = 2.9) were the participants in this study. The recommended AC and DC distances in this study suggest that many methods used to determine a representative gait may include non SS walking as the gaitway length. This might not affect findings based on repeated measures in which pre- and posttesting use the same protocol and include the same AC and DC walking distance or assessments that time a participant walking a set distance starting from a standstill. However, it is a concern when there is an assumption that findings represent SS walking, describe a specific walking pattern, or present walking speed based on the time to walk the set distance. In the latter case, the speed represents the average speed to accomplish the task, and the shorter the walking distance the more this average speed varies from the SS speed. The authors recommend that for gait analysis and study of representative SS walking patterns, the gaitway should include at least the AC and DC distances identified in the present study, thus enabling these distances to be excluded from the gait analysis or walking speed assessment. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)