hey guys thank you so much for the effort and attention... I really appreciate the help... I can't say it enough...
so i had the crazy thought to add a child object to my character and put a rigidbody on it (even though my character has one) and then put that game object speed action on the child, and it works... its returning data... I should be able to use that for the animations...
I don't know why it would work on the child with a rigidbody and not the parent with a rigidbody... but at this point, I'll take it...
Thanks again for the attention.