[alatar]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

Alatar -- none of that changes the physical demands of supplying the muscles with glycogen. The greatest car in the world, product of the best enginering, design and manufacturing, cannot travel without gasoline. A car designed to travel with a top speed of 100 mph cannot go 200 mph no matter who is pushing down on the pedals.

Agreed. But the Professor, through his writing, convinces me that Balrogs are as common as clover, and so persons running 135 miles without Gatorade or a corporate sponsor is not unusual.

Running has little to do with motivation or urgency. It has a great deal to me with the mechanics of the human body and the physical laws which govern it.

As I know...once had to trace the biological path when a person rings a doorbell from the molecular to cognitive, and also worked with myosin, and so you can see by my name dropping that I can pretend to know running as you do.

To a world used to comic books, superheroes, Chinese fighters who can balance on 200 foot pine tree limbs, and other fantasies, perhaps the run of the Three Hunters is believable.

And movies and the nightly news ("Bigfoot captured on film voting for Clinton!")

Many Tolkien book purists take great delight in bashing the Jackson films for every little thing they can think of that defies rigid logic. This Denethor plunge is but one example. On the previous page, Knight of Gondor uses several film stills to show just how far this distance is and concludes he could not make that run in less than three minutes. He concludes it would be impossible. And everybody piles on posting humorous witicisms about what a horses *** Peter Jackson is for showing it like this.

I'm not a purist, but I take delight in making fun of the overtly silly as a way of questioning why the plunge, for example, was better than the pyre.

But when it comes to their precious book - the True Believers march in lockstep and will trot out any number of hoops and jump through them when challenged.
At that time, creative thinking, imaginative reasoning and plain old fashioned "its a fantasy for heavens sake" take over.

I see this as hypocrisy.

And it is. Everyone has sacred cows penned up somewhere. Ever go cow-tipping?

I could tell you about cases of people catching on fire and running several blocks to get help. I personaly know of a six year old girl whose dress caught on fire and she ran four blocks to her house causing burns on a majority of her body and nearly died. It happened. Its real. It occured here in the real world. And she was not a Numenorean or Elve or anyone with special powers.

I could tell you about the monks in Asia who burned themselves alive and amazingly kept their composure, not crying out or even twitching for sevral minutes while they were consumed. That took a will power and physical control that seems to defy logic and reason. It happened. Its real. It occured here in the real world. And they were not Numenoreans or Elves or anyone with special powers.

Note that I'm a skeptic, and so would need hard evidence even if I saw the things that you witnessed. Sorry, that's just me.

Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. Lets just remember that.

I wouldn't have it otherwise. Challenge what I write, and I will do the same and we will be the better for it (and if I get annoying, let me know that too ).