that's normal actually, what it's doing is making the walk cycle in place, and allowing you to set the distance.
best way to understand this, is first create a walk cycle - give yourself like 2 times the amount you need to give yourself space to work / learn. - after the walk cycle is done, go forward a few frames, and move your character to a new position in the scene, you will see the motion begin to take shape and the character walk forward, next you have to adjust that keyframe in the timeline to get the timing right to smooth out the slipping feet so the character doesn't look like it's ice skating...
I believe there are also walk cycle motions in your base files that time the distance / walk for you, so you may want to check those as well for brevity.
☯🐉
"To define Tao is to defile it" - Lao Tzu