On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 06:11:02PM -0700, Howard Brazee wrote: > Peter H. Granzeau wrote: > >> During those 7 days, he marched in the vicinity of 800 miles, which > >> works out to about 7 miles per hour... still an awfully fast march > >> but... well, I don't know enough to call that impossible. > > I think it is extremely improbable. While an army of Dragaerans > > might make it, historic forced marches by humans end up at maybe 45 > > miles in a day, and never extend over the period of a week. . . . > The Roman Empire was won and kept by being able to do forced marches better > than their opponents. > > Does anybody have any figures on how fast their armies moved and were ready > to fight? Granzeaus number (45 miles per day, and never for over a week) is representative of the Roman Legions in their prime. That included full gear, which I seem to recall was in the neighborhood of 40 lbs. If memory serves, there were cases where they pushed 60 miles but never on back to back days. Todays adult men can probably do better due simply to longer legs, Dragaerans could probably better that again. But in each case, I doubt the increase would be much over 10%. That would come to about 55 miles/day. 800 miles in 7 days is 113 miles per day. 7mph means they have to march over 16 hours a day, not counting breaks, eating and sleeping. 7mph is a marathon in just under 3.5 hours. 113 miles is almost five marathons, back to back. Do that seven days in a row? I'm with Granzeau here; 800 miles in 7 days is simply not doable, even if you grant the Dragaerans 20% for longer legs.