[Knight of Gondor]

I honestly feel that all of this is pointless. It's like demanding to know where Gandalf peed while he was imprisoned on Orthanc, or how Luthien could cloak herself in the guise of another animal. These intrusive "that's not real!" objections tend to indicate (to me) that if all of these challenges come to your mind, you're not a fantasy buff.

When you attack the films that is fair game. When other attack the books that is nitpicking. Do you not see the hypocrisy?

Actually...no. Peter Jackson's job was to convert the books from print to movie. He wasn't hired to rewrite LotR. All in all, I give the man high marks, I believe he did a good job.

Aragorn may have been given long life but I know of nothing which allowed his muscles to work independently of the rest of the human race. Being a great hunter, tracker and explorer is one thing - being able to run superhuman distances is quite another.

I don't quite feel the compulsion to defend the act. I am certain there are numerous other examples of implausibility within the novels. But I note that absence of knowledge ("I know of nothing") is not knowledge of absence (he could not have).

But that was not my point from the start. My point is that the True Believers, the Defenders of the Word, will employ all means of creative thinking to justify anything JRRT wrote and do so with a completely straight face. At the same time, many enjoy ripping the films to shreds ignoring the faults of their own love. That is hypocrisy and I wish it would stop or at least be tempered with the realization of what is really happening here.

Naturally, fantasy aficionados would like to reconcile the differences between the real world and Middle-Earth to make belief and acceptance easier for their rational minds. I feel that fantasy in this case does not need defending.

Fantasy exists as a medium of escapism for many, if not most. I'll wager that most of your readers endeavoring to defend the otherwise implausible moments in Lord of the Rings are doing so because they want to believe it is attainable in the real world. They would rather make our world in the image of Middle-Earth than the opposite.

If real life is the apple, fantasy is the orange. The defining trait of escapism is in immersing one's self in an alternate world; its very merit of the orange lies in being different from the apple. To try to reconcile the orange into the apple is defeating the very purpose of the orange.

I also think you miss the point regarding fault-finding in the film. Having accepted the novels, the quarrels and nitpicking result from the disparities between them and the film adaptation. Finding logical faults in one thing alone (the books) is much different than finding fault between two things (translation from book to film), especially if one thing is supposed to be a translation between mediums of two things.

Hence, when Denethor races for miles while on fire to jump off the pinnacle of Minas Tirith (look out beloooow), fans protest not so much that this is impractical and illogical, but that it is different from the book's events, which are far more believable.

They met up with Eomer and company on the fourth day. The vast bulk of that 135 was done in three days time.

Nothing that has been said changes the basic human anatomy or physiology. Glycogen supplies muscles and the muscles must be trained over long periods of time to store glycogen. Nothing that has been said gets around that basic fact of reality.

Okay, let's get mathematical about this. The average mortal human running speed is about 15 miles an hour. Faster runners can achieve faster speeds, but let's stay with 15 mph. Discounting for the moment the need for sustenance and rests, running at the average 15 miles per hour, one could achieve 135 miles' distance in nine hours of solid running.

Obviously, mortal humans cannot keep up a constant speed of running. Let's say, for more than 15 minutes, or one quarter of an hour at a time. Multiplying nine hours by four, we can surmise that 36 intervals of 15 minutes at a time running at 15 miles an hour would achieve the same distance as 9 hours of solid running.

Now let us allot 72 hours (three days) and not count the extended "day four" period of time during which the Three Hunters meet Eomer. Multiplying 72 by 4, we find that there are a total of 288 quarter-hour periods in the span of three 24-hour days. Therefore, the Three Hunters need only have spent nine percent of their journeying time running at a constant speed of 15 miles an hour for fifteen minutes at a time.

To be merciful, we could cut the periods of running down to 10 minutes' time. The distance could then be achieved with 54 intervals running 15 miles an hour, or only about one-fifth of the alloted time of 72 hours.

To be further merciful (accounting for the time(s) of rest and sleep), let's only allot 60 hours. That's 240 periods of 15 minutes each running at 15 miles an hour for ten minutes at a time. Thus requiring only 23% of the time to be used to run.

On the negative side, there were breaks to find tracks and breaks for rest and sustenance.

But if we are searching for a naturalistic explanation for an otherwise improbable deed, we must also account for the hardiness of the races of men, elves and dwarves, and for the otherworldly virtue of the Elvish waybread.

Let me know if you have objections to my math...I'm not above simple errors, but I used a calculator and double-checked my figures, and as a university business student, I have a pretty good background in college math.