Does Mecanim work if you have your looping animations without root offset?

I did the Mecanim tutorial and got my character running around the level pretty quickly, which was awesome. But one thing I've been wondering about is the following: Do you always need to use animations where the root of the character is moving? How can I get my own walk cycle, which is animated in place (as in the root of the character doesn't move forward or backward), to work with Mecanim? Or is that just not possible?

I've been searching for an answer, but I can't seem to find anything about it. All the examples I've seen so far are using mocap data where root movement is obviously always there.