Character Sliding before animation starts

Hi, my problem is - when my begins to move, it slides on the ground before the run animation starts playing. It seems everyone else who has had this problem had it because of the exit times, however I can assure you none of my transitions have exit times so that's not the issue.

I have my code setup so that whenever the W key is being pressed, the parameter for the run animation to play is set to true. S key for the backwards anim parameter. My worst fear is that the system is just taking to long to run all this through the animator and so the transition lags behind. Is this a bad way of setting it up? better ways?

Also, since my editor is running at about .5 frames per second, I'm having to build it every time I test. On a FEW of the builds, this transition problem wasn't happening, however most of them it is.

Any answer is greatly appreciated. Cheers!