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Originally Posted by Sauron the White
I will give Alatar the courtesy of an answer then hopefully, we can go on to new things like wings on balrogs.
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Thanks for playing along as I try to make my point (yes, I have one).
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What I know about is long distance running. I can talk about that with some level of confidence. I cannot discuss walking - sorry. But that is fine because WALKING is not what JRRT describes either in his tale so it is a point that does not have to be discussed. Again, walking at a normal pace DOES NOT prepare a person, or their muscles, for running or even striding. My best guess would be for the average person without training, the best they could travel in a single day would be perhaps 20 miles if they mixed running , striding and walking. After that, their glycogen and muscles would be depleted. If the dogs of hell were on their tail, perhaps they could do it again the next day. And if bones were strapped to their backs to entice the dogs, perhaps they could do it a third day.
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You are a long distance runner. I'd guess that the
percentage LotR Movie viewers/Book readers that are long distance runners is small (for USA yr 2006, I estimate significantly less than 7.9% of all persons). Most/some people, like me, have a cursory experience with running, especially long distances. Tolkien and PJ subconsciously or consciously know this. So if you, who I assume would provide a low estimate for the number of miles a person could travel in a part of a day, can get us to 60-70 miles (for three or three+ days), then it's not hard to see how others, with less experience, can (wrongfully; yes, I know) let slide the event that three heroes could travel twice that distance. As you yourself have stated, when you first read the running scene before you became more knowledgeable about foot travel, you skipped right by it. But now...
And I know that we're both riding this horse into the ground for other reasons. You want more honest criticism of the Books, and others want (and enjoy) to continue to criticize PJ's efforts. The points made are that Tolkien is superior, at least in the medium that he uses, in providing a more internally consistent 'secondary world,' whereas PJ does not as well in doing the same.
Maybe it would be helpful (and keep me from the ever-looming boredom) for you to note other examples of where Tolkien fails in creating a SW for you in the Books section of the forum. Start a thread there and I'll happily post.
Guess we could also start yet another PJ inconsistency thread, but my SbS posts cover much of that ground, and so maybe someone else would want to get that horse out of the stable.