I hate walking my dog, need input.

I used to be a runner, my last dog would run like 5 miles a night with me. That was over 8 year ago. I no longer really run. Part of that is when I got my new dog, he's quite a bit bigger than my old dog and gets distracted by everything. I took a few falls.

I don't really expect to run with this dog, but even our walks are just excruciating to me. I don't have a yard, so our walks and trips to parks and stuff are his only exercise. When we walk he stops at everything!!! Like, it takes a half hour to go a mile. If we kept focus we could do at least 4 miles on our walks but just his constant stops... drives me nuts.

I feel like I should train him to not stop so much so we could cover way more ground, but at the same time I feel bad because we don't have a yard so it's his time to sniff around and stuff. He's an 80lb blue healer mix too so he really needs the exercise. At least twice a week he ends up someplace like fields or a park or a beach he can run around at his own pace, but the daily walks.... I don't know. It's just annoying.

Do you let your dog sniff around? Is this a me thing or just part of having a dog?