running discussion

From: Steve Lieb <steve_at_necadon.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 16:42:11 -0500

> >I can't believe that somebody on foot is swifter than somebody on horse
> >(even without remounts). Can it be that here movement on paved ways is
> >compared against movement in rugged terrain?
>
> No. The question was not about speed but about stamina, or rather
> the energy efficiency of bipedalism over quadrupedalism. Although
> horses are definitely faster than humans, they cannot travel as far
> per day and soon the human can overtake them.

I'd be interested in a citation for this factoid. Everything I've seen tends to suggest that this isn't the case - the Tevis cup has horses finishing 100 miles in roughly 15 hours IIRC "in good condition to continue" I think is even part of the charter, but I may be wrong about that.

The Sri Chinmoy (I think this is some foreign tongue for "ungodly long" :) Races are ultra-endurance races, where people are running roughly 60 miles per day for 50 days or so.

So while these aren't apples to apples comparisons, it just seems that this might suggest that horses are roughly 1.5 times "better" even on a macro scale, as well as being faster.

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